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Happy 60th birthday, video games. Thank William Higinbotham for your misspent evenings
The Register ^ | 22 October 2018 | Richard Speed

Posted on 10/22/2018 10:29:52 AM PDT by ShadowAce

Tennis for Two (photo: Brookhaven National Laboratory)
Tennis for Two ... the first videogame? Pic: Brookhaven National Laboratory

The forerunner of today's video games celebrated its 60th birthday last week as the anniversary of William Higinbotham's Tennis for Two rolled around.

Tennis for Two was built by Higinbotham as a way of injecting a bit of life into the somewhat non-interactive nature of US-based Brookhaven National Laboratory's annual exhibition. It consisted of two controllers attached to an analogue computer and an oscilloscope showing two lines representing a tennis court and net, and a bright dot to represent the ball.

Each player had a controller with a button to swing an invisible racquet and a dial to adjust the angle, and goodness, it blew the minds of the attendees of the exhibition. Hundreds queued to have a go on the wonder-device.

The "brain" of the game was an analogue computer, the Donner Model 30, which came with an instruction manual describing how to simulate trajectories and bouncing on the cathode ray tube of an oscilloscope. It was a short intellectual hop for Higinbotham to translate this into a tennis game. Advances in transistors allowed the display of the ball, net and tennis court (or rather, dot, short vertical line and long horizontal line) and, with the help of an assistant, the game was put together in three weeks.

A follow-up in 1959 featured a larger screen and adjustable gravity before the device was eventually put away and forgotten. Higinbotham reflected that perhaps a patent might have been a good idea as the likes of Pong appeared and the money began to roll in. However, as his employer, any licensing cash would have headed the government's way.

There continues to be controversy as to whether this was the very first video game. Ten years earlier, physicists at DuMont Laboratories had come up with game where a player twiddled knobs to make a dot reach a plastic target stuck on a screen in the snappily titled "Cathode-ray tube amusement device". The lack of computer involvement pretty much rules it out, however.

1951's Nimrod computer was able to play the strategy game Nim, but made do with lights rather than a cathode ray tube. 1952 brought OXO, developed by Alexander Douglas at the University of Cambridge on the Electronic Delay Storage Automatic Calculator (EDSAC), which used a cathode ray tube to show the current state of the game, albeit in a static form.

60 years on, it is Tennis for Two, a game created purely to entertain, that would be the most familiar to today's players with its controllers and moving imagery (even without the jiggly bits of today's entertainment). For his part, Higinbotham, who went on to be the first chair of the Federation of American Scientists, said of the game: "It might liven up the place to have a game that people could play, and which would convey the message that our scientific endeavors have relevance for society." As for how things turned out, Higinbotham observed: "Whether or not inventing video games is something to be proud of is another matter."

A reconstructed Tennis for Two was exhibited at the National Museum of Play in Rochester, New York, and the orginal schematics for making the thing still exist at the Brookhaven National Laboratory. ®

Bootnote

Interestingly, the godfather of video gaming was also on the team that produced electronics for the first atomic bomb, but Higinbotham would go on to become a major voice in the nonproliferation movement. Hopefully, nuke killstreaks remain limited to video games for the foreseeable future.



TOPICS: Computers/Internet
KEYWORDS: computers; freepgeek; games
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To: Snickering Hound

I’m deciding that is Erin Grey’s sister, Tina...


21 posted on 10/22/2018 11:35:48 AM PDT by EEGator
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To: ShadowAce

Kids lining up to play Pong on the display unit at Sears.
I remember that like it was yesterday.


22 posted on 10/22/2018 12:48:03 PM PDT by Buckeye McFrog
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To: ShadowAce; Gamecock; SaveFerris; FredZarguna; PROCON; Army Air Corps; KC_Lion
Misspent evenings? Video games rock!

Greasy pizza and Frogger!


23 posted on 10/22/2018 1:05:38 PM PDT by Larry Lucido
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To: dfwgator

24 posted on 10/22/2018 1:09:03 PM PDT by Larry Lucido
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To: ShadowAce

My introduction to computer gaming was Zork on the IBM VM machine. Never figured it out.


25 posted on 10/22/2018 1:19:18 PM PDT by deadrock
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To: ShadowAce
Commercial Photography
26 posted on 10/22/2018 5:48:37 PM PDT by CaliforniaCraftBeer
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To: CaliforniaCraftBeer
Commercial Photography
27 posted on 10/22/2018 5:53:44 PM PDT by CaliforniaCraftBeer
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To: CaliforniaCraftBeer
Commercial Photography
28 posted on 10/22/2018 5:59:20 PM PDT by CaliforniaCraftBeer
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To: CaliforniaCraftBeer
Commercial Photography
29 posted on 10/22/2018 6:10:57 PM PDT by CaliforniaCraftBeer
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To: Larry Lucido

I saw this and knew it would be you. Excellent.


30 posted on 10/22/2018 6:14:19 PM PDT by Yaelle
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To: CaliforniaCraftBeer

Robotron was my first game addiction. Yeah, I used to slide downstairs and hit that machine with my quarters at school, so? I turned out ok, didn’t I??


31 posted on 10/22/2018 6:15:31 PM PDT by Yaelle
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To: Yaelle
Commercial Photography
32 posted on 10/22/2018 6:46:39 PM PDT by CaliforniaCraftBeer
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To: Moonman62

Otherwise it would have been tampon insertion game for girls.


33 posted on 10/22/2018 6:47:52 PM PDT by wgmalabama (The government murdered Robert LaVoy Finicum - what makes you think you are not next)
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To: CaliforniaCraftBeer

Oh yeah baby!


34 posted on 10/22/2018 6:52:29 PM PDT by Yaelle
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To: CaliforniaCraftBeer

Awesome game!


35 posted on 10/22/2018 6:56:40 PM PDT by Tolerance Sucks Rocks ( The US Constitution ....... Invented by geniuses and God .... Administered by morons ......)
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To: CaliforniaCraftBeer

“Tempest” was the best video game of its time.


36 posted on 10/22/2018 7:05:05 PM PDT by Henchster (Free Republic - the BEST site on the web!)
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To: ShadowAce

So many games, so little time.


37 posted on 10/22/2018 7:11:00 PM PDT by CJ Wolf (Free)
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To: CJ Wolf

+1


38 posted on 10/22/2018 8:38:16 PM PDT by kanawa (Trump Loves a Great Deal)
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To: CaliforniaCraftBeer

Tempest was my favorite!


39 posted on 10/23/2018 7:31:24 AM PDT by rdb3 (rdb2 ~ Nov. 9, 1934 - Jun. 2, 2018)
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To: ShadowAce

What year did Trap Shoot (I think that’s the name) come out? There is still one in play at a local pizza Parlor...


40 posted on 10/24/2018 9:04:02 AM PDT by tubebender
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