Lesson plan

Basic/Four

Basic/Four is a variety of Business Basic which originally ran on computers of the same name introduced in 1971. The company that produced the system, Management Assistance, Inc., was later known as Basic/Four Corporation, MAI Basic Four, Inc., and MAI Basic Four Information Systems. Basic/Four set the pattern for the business BASIC market, with similar products appearing on other minicomputer systems, and later, microcomputers like the Apple III. It remained a popular product into the early 1980s, when increasingly powerful micros replaced it, and MAI turned to selling pre-packaged Basic/Four like accounting software. Basic/Four Corporation was created as a subsidiary of Management Assistance, Inc. in Irvine, California in 1971. Basic/Four initially sold small business minicomputers that were assembled from Microdata Corporation CPUs, but in 1976 they began selling their own 16-bit CPU designs. Over the next three years they introduced a series of models of these designs, the 200 through 730, with various configurations of memory, terminal servers and hard drive. By the end of 1978 they had approximately 6000 systems in the field in total. Basic Four was one of the first commercially available business BASIC interpreters. The computers ran an operating system with the BASIC interpreter integrated, known as BOSS. The BASIC interpreter was written in TREE-META.…

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Article summary

Basic/Four is a variety of Business Basic which originally ran on computers of the same name introduced in 1971. The company that produced the system, Management Assistance, Inc., was later known as Basic/Four Corporation, MAI Basic Four, Inc., and MAI Basic Four Information Systems. Basic/Four set the pattern for the business BASIC market, with similar products appearing on other minicomputer systems, and later, microcomputers like the Apple III. It remained a popular product into the early 1980s, when increasingly powerful micros replaced it, and MAI turned to selling pre-packaged Basic/Four like accounting software. Basic/Four Corporation was created as a subsidiary of Management Assistance, Inc. in Irvine, California in 1971. Basic/Four initially sold small business minicomputers that were assembled from Microdata Corporation CPUs, but in 1976 they began selling their own 16-bit CPU designs. Over the next three years they introduced a series of models of these designs, the 200 through 730, with various configurations of memory, terminal servers and hard drive. By the end of 1978 they had approximately 6000 systems in the field in total. Basic Four was one of the first commercially available business BASIC interpreters. The computers ran an operating system with the BASIC interpreter integrated, known as BOSS. The BASIC interpreter was written in TREE-META.…

Key claims

  1. release date: 1988 — source: Wikipedia · confidence 0.95

Discussion questions

  1. Summarise the article in your own words. Which single claim would you verify first, and why?
  2. The record states that the release date is "1988". What evidence would count against this claim?
  3. Which claim in this article is most likely to be revised as the sources update? How would you check its current status?
  4. If two sources disagreed about one of these facts, what would you need in order to trust one over the other?

Bibliography

  1. Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?oldid=1355321357

Key claims and bibliography are generated from the same tracked claims and sources as the article page.