William Higinbotham

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

William (Willy) A. Higinbotham (October 25, 1910 - November 10, 1994), an American physicist, is credited with creating one of the first computer games, Tennis for Two. Like PONG, its a portrait of a game of tennis or ping-pong, but featured very different game mechanics that have no resemblance to the later game. 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 helped found the nuclear nonproliferation group, Federation of American Scientists, and served as its first chairman and executive secretary.

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. When after his death, requests for information on the "Grandfather of the Videogame" increased, his son William Higinbotham II wrote, "It is imperative that you include information on his nuclear nonproliferation work. That was what he wanted to be remembered for."