This chapter reconstructs BASIC as a cultural infrastructure rather than merely an obsolete language. Developed by Kemeny and Kurtz for the Dartmouth Time-Sharing System, BASIC combined approachable syntax with immediate interaction and broad institutional access. Its iconic achievement was not simplicity alone but the coupling of language, terminals and time-sharing that allowed many users to experiment simultaneously. The chapter’s method joins technical history, software studies and aesthetic analysis, demonstrating how a one-line program such as 10 PRINT derives its visual character from the affordances of a specific language and machine environment. BASIC’s portability and pedagogical circulation enabled programs to move through magazines, classrooms and domestic computers, producing a distributed culture of modification. The wider bridge is toward media archaeology: code is inseparable from the platforms, communities and temporal rhythms that support it. BASIC made computation public by turning programming into an ordinary, repeatable form of authorship.