Early history of video games

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The early history of video games dates back to 1947, with a missile simulator which uses analog circuitry.^[1]

Contents 1 1947 2 1948 3 1950 4 1951 5 1952 6 1958 7 1959 8 1961 9 1962 10 1965 11 1966 12 1967 13 1969 14 1970 15 1971 15.1 Notable releases 16 References

1947

• The earliest known interactive electronic game was created by Thomas T. Goldsmith Jr. and Estle Ray Mann on a cathode ray tube.^[2] The patent was filed on January 25, 1947 and issued on December 14, 1948. The game was a missile simulator inspired by radar displays from World War II. It used analog circuitry, not digital, to control the CRT beam and position a dot on the screen. Screen overlays were used for targets since graphics could not be drawn at the time.^[1]

1948

Alan Turing and colleague D. G. Champernowne wrote a chess playing algorithm. At the time, there was not a computer powerful enough to run the algorithm. The algorithm was tested two times by human versus algorithm matches. The algorithm won once and lost once.^[3]

1950

In March 1950, Claude Shannon devised a chess playing program that appeared in the paper "Programming a Computer for Playing Chess" published in Philosophical Magazine. This was the first article on the problem of computer chess, published before anyone had programmed a computer to play chess.

1951

• On May 5, 1951, the NIMROD computer was presented at the Science Museum (London) during the Festival of Britain. Using a panel of lights for its display, it was designed exclusively to play the game of NIM; this was the first instance of a digital computer designed specifically to play a game.^[4] NIMROD could play either the traditional or "reverse" form of the game.

• TV engineer named Ralph Baer was asked by the chief engineer at Loral to build "the best television set in the world". Baer came up with an idea for playing games on the television set, but the idea was turned down.

• In November 1951, Dr. Dietrich Prinz wrote the original chess playing program for the Manchester Ferranti computer.

1952

• In 1952, one of the first video games ever made, OXO (also known as Noughts and Crosses) by A. S. Douglas. OXO was written for the EDSAC computer. The game was a Tic-tac-toe based game, played against the computer, and although OXO never gained any real popularity, because the EDSAC was available only at Cambridge, it was still a milestone in the history of video games.
• Christopher S. Strachey created a program on the Ferranti machine which, by the summer of 1952, "could play a complete game of draughts (checkers) at a reasonable speed". Arthur Samuel built on his work to make a checkers-playing program for the IBM 701, which ran at the end of the year.

1958

• Tennis for Two was a computer game developed in 1958 on an oscilloscope which simulated a game of tennis or ping pong. It was created by William Higinbotham. Unlike Pong and similar early games, Tennis for Two shows a simplified tennis court from the side instead of a top-down perspective. The ball is affected by gravity and must be played over the net. The game was controlled by an analog computer and "consisted mostly of resistors, capacitors and relays, but where fast switching was needed – when the ball was in play – transistor switches were used".

1959

In 1959-1961, a collection of interactive graphical programs were created on the TX-0 machine at MIT:

• Mouse in the Maze: which allowed users to place maze walls, bits of cheese, and (in some versions) glasses of martini by way of a light pen interacting with the screen. One could then release the mouse and watch it traverse the maze to find the goodies.

• Tic-Tac-Toe: Using the light pen, the user could play a simple game of naughts and crosses against the computer.

1961

• A DEC memo M-1098 from March 31, 1961 references a Kalah game playing program developed for the PDP-1.^[5]

1962

• Spacewar! is released, one of the earliest known digital computer games. Conceived and written by Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) students including Stephen Russell who programmed it, the Spacewar! game first ran in early 1962 on the PDP-1 donated to the school by Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC). Early versions of the game contained a randomly generated background starfield.

• Later, a program called Expensive Planetarium (referring to the price of the PDP-1 computer) was incorporated into the main code, replacing the randomly generated star field. The program was based on real star charts that scrolled slowly: at any one time, 45% of the night sky was visible, every star down to the fifth magnitude.

1965

• First ever baseball simulation game written in BASIC by John Kemeny and later edited by Keith Bellairs on January 13, 1965.^[6]

1966

• Larry Bethurum, from the Phillips Exter Academy, submitted the BASIC source code of a bingo game to the DECUS user group. Comments in the code suggest the game was written on January 23, 1966.^[7]

1967

• First basketball simulation game written in BASIC by Charles R. Bacheller in May, 1967.^[8]

• A baseball game that simulates the 1967 World Series written in BASIC by Jacob Bergmann in August 1967.^[9]

1969

• Space Travel is written by Ken Thompson for a Multics system.
• Hamurabi, one of the first strategy games, is released.

1970

A number of games programmed in BASIC can be found in the DECUS library back-up tapes. Unfortunately, most games do not include the name of the programmer or the date when the program was written.^[10]

Name	Description	Programmer(s)	Archived Date
1queen.gam	Plays a game based on chess moves	Unknown	9/2/70
apawam.gam	Plays a round of golf at the apawamis country club	Unknown	9/2/70
bandit.gam	The computer is a slot machine and you are the player	Unknown	9/21/70
batnum.gam	Battle of numbers between user and computer	Unknown	9/21/70
bridge.gam	Bridge practice session	Unknown	9/21/70
craps.gam	A session at the craps table	Unknown	9/21/70
digits.gam	Guesses a sequence of numbers	Unknown	9/2/70
ftball.gam	Generates a digital championship football game	John G. Kemeny	9/21/70
gamnin.gam	Plays game of Nim	Unknown	9/2/70
hangmn.gam	Plays hangman	Unknown	9/21/70
horserac.gam	A day at the races at South Portland High	Laurie Chevalier	9/2/70
learn1.gam	Learns to play a game of "21"	Unknown	9/2/70
nim.dem	Plays the ancient game of Nim	Unknown	9/2/70
qubic.gam	Plays 3-dimensional Tic Tac Toe	Unknown	9/21/70
roulet.gam	Generates game of Roulette	Unknown	9/2/70
tictac.gam	Plays game of tic-tac-toe	Unknown	9/2/70
war.gam	Plays the card game of war	Unknown	9/21/70

1971

• On 22 March, Ralph Baer files with the United States Patent and Trademark Office regarding a patent for "television gaming and training apparatus."^[11]
• In June, Bill Pitts and Hugh Tuck form Computer Recreations, Inc.^[12]
• Magnavox signs a license agreement with Sanders Associates regarding the Odyssey video game console.^[13]
• Nakamura Manufacturing Ltd. adopts "Namco" as a brand name.^[14]

Notable releases

• In September, Computer Recreations, Inc. installs Galaxy Game, a version of Spacewar! for PDP-11 hardware and the first coin-operated video arcade game, in Tresidder Union at Stanford University.^[12]
• In November, Nutting Associates releases 1,500 cabinets of Nolan Bushnell's Computer Space, the first commercially released video game in the arcades.^[13]
• Don Rawitsch, Paul Dillenberger and Bill Heinemann, students at Carleton College develop The Oregon Trail for a mainframe with teletype terminals.^[15]
• Don Daglow programs the computer baseball game on a PDP-10 mainframe computer at Pomona College.^[16]
• Mike Mayfield develops Star Trek on a Scientific Data Systems Sigma 7 minicomputer.^[17]

References

History of video games By generation First (1972–1977) · Second (1976–1984) · Third (1983–1992) · Fourth (1987–1996) · Fifth (1993–2006) · Sixth (1998–) · Seventh (2005–) · Eighth (2012–) By decade 1980s · 1990s · 2000s · 2010s By year Years prior to 1972  · 1970 1971 1972 · 1973 · 1974 · 1975 · 1976 · 1977 · 1978 · 1979 1980 · 1981 · 1982 · 1983 · 1984 · 1985 · 1986 · 1987 · 1988 · 1989 1990 · 1991 · 1992 · 1993 · 1994 · 1995 · 1996 · 1997 · 1998 · 1999 2000 · 2001 · 2002 · 2003 · 2004 · 2005 · 2006 · 2007 · 2008 · 2009 2010 · 2011 · 2012 By system Arcade game history (Golden age of video arcade games · Timeline of video arcade game history) · Video game console history (North American video game crash of 1983) · PC game history By genre Action game history · Action-adventure game history · Adventure game history · History of role-playing video games · Sports game history · Strategy video game history