1958: Tennis for Two
Category: Laboratory
Designed by William Higinbotham against the boredom of visitors to the Brookhaven National Laboratory in New York, Tennis for Two was a game designed on an analogue lab computer, using an oscilloscope for display. As the computer’s manual included example instructions on how to simulate the trajectory of a bouncing ball, the idea of creating an interactive tennis game was not all too far-fetched. The oscilloscope showed a court and a net, as well as the bouncing ball which could be smashed back to the other player’s side by altering the angle with a knob, and then pushing a button. But what’s a description if you can watch an actual gameplay video of a recreated device a few pixels further down?
Watch it
This short documentary on a reconstruction effort at the BNL includes some very nice historical pictures and anecdotes:
A gameplay video of the reconstructed Tennis for Two device:
Play it
Gamer’s Quarter has an interesting simulator up for download, written in Python and using SDL, although there is only a pre-compiled Windows version available for download. It includes neat features such as a computer opponent and even network play. You can’t deny it’s fun to bounce that dot around!
Get the Tennis for Two simulator
1952: Checkers program
Christopher S. Strachey writes a Checkers program for the Ferranti Mark I computer. Arthur Samuel would adapt this for the early IBM 701 series mainframe later that year.
1951: NIMROD
Category: Laboratory
The first computer built specifically to play a game. The size of a couple of refrigerators, its purpose was to convince visitors to a science exhibition of the advantages of the new digital computers. It was built by Ferranti, and based on their Mark I computer model. All it did was play the game of NIM against a human player. Wikipedia has nice articles on the rules of the game, as well as NIMROD, with a very nice sketch of it.
1947: Cathode ray tube amusement device
Category: Laboratory
Patented by a Thomas T. Goldsmith Jr. and an Estle Ray Mann in January 1947, this first idea of an electronic game device was probably heavily influenced by the fact that most electronic technology has been developed for war purposes. The aim of the game was to direct a missile to targets on the CRT. The game consists entirely of analogue components. Players would influence the trajectory and speed of the missile with knobs. As it was not yet possible to display targets on the CRT, they were actually overlays that one put on the screen manually. The device itself used 8 vacuum tubes.
Apart from the patent itself, information on this contraption is pretty scarce on the Internet. There are no moving images or simulators of the game that I know of.
