William Higinbotham
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William (Willy) A. Higinbotham (October 25, 1910 - November 10, 1994), a physicist, is credited with creating the first video game, Tennis for Two, which is similar to PONG but without paddles. As the Head of the Instrumentation Division at Brookhaven National Laboratory, he created it on an oscilloscope in 1958, to entertain visitors during visitor days at the national laboratory.
He was also the first chairman of the Federation of American Scientists.
He earned his undergraduate degree from Williams College in 1932 and continued his studies at Cornell University and MIT. During World War II, he worked at Los Alamos National Laboratory and headed the lab's electronics group in the latter years of the war.
He is said to have expressed regret that he would more likely be famous for his invention of a game than for his work on nuclear non-proliferation.
[edit] External links
- Video games History at BNL
- The First Video Game
- The Dot Eaters entry on Higinbotham and his PONG precursor
- Who Really Invented The Video Game?
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