You might be able to download what you need here: Intel Other Resources - Intel Vintage[^]

To add to the old-timers theory, I started programming in 1976 on my job. The first language was an assembler for a minicomputer and then Fortran. After that, I started to college working on my E.E. degree and they forced me to take one semester each of Basic and Fortran (again). By that time I was learning both Pascal and C at work so my exposure to Basic didn't do me too much harm. You can count me as another programmer (still programming for a living) who did not start with the Basic language. I also never heard A$ pronounced A-string until I read this thread. I also never considered Basic to have given birth to the concept of the terminology. I'll see if I can did out some of my old books and find any references to strings that predate Basic.