History of video games 1950 – 1970

First Spacewars Game

A.S Douglas, I believe, first decided to use the computer to have fun. At the time he wrote his PhD degree at the University of Cambridge on human-Computer interaction. Douglas created the first computer based, graphical game, although it was as simple as tic-tac-toe, it was the first of its kind, and was primarily used to inject some life into the computer which, until then, had only been used for educational and scientific purposes. The game was programmed on an EDSAC vaccuum-tube computer, which used a cathode ray tube display.

            The next step in this computer entertainment evolution was in 1958 as William higinbotham created the first video game ever. The difference between the computer game and the video game speaks for it’s self and is explained in the title; video games are played via a video system connected to a television, whilst the computer games are run and played on a computer system which is displayed by a monitor. This video game was named “Tennis for Two”, and was so named as it was William’s intentions to have two players playing tennis against each other. This first ever game was created and played on a Brookhaven National Laboratory oscilloscope.

Tennis for Two on the oscilloscope

            In 1962 the first game purposely designed for computer use was created by Steve Russell, and was called “SpaceWar!” Russell used a MIT PDP-1 mainframe computer to design his game, this, at the time was a more than adequate computer for Russell’s purposes, I believe that this computer was chosen by Russell due to its large processing power, for the time, and with its availability to Russell.

            Although not the first video game designed to be played on a television set, this was in fact the first to be player on a television set. “Chase” was the name of this one. In 1967, Ralph Baer was the creator, he made the game whilst working with sanders associates which was part of a military electronics firm, however, he first thought of this idea in 1951 when, at the time was working for Loral, the television company.

Pong screenshot

Pong again

           Later, in the 1970s, there were more creations in imitation to the works of Douglas and Russell’s earlier work, the likes of “Computer Space” and “Pong” was brought about by Nolan Bushnell. From this, the birth of Atari Computers came about with Atari re-releasing “Pong” as a home video game.

            It has struck me that the creators of these first computer and video games are all form a well educated background, as most of them worked for prestigious universities and electronics companies. This does strike as significant, as you would have to imagine, were these resources that were mentioned previous, not available to them, this would point out that they most likely would not be able to create these games that started a whole evolution in computer gaming and contributed heavily to moulding the games industry into what it is today. Admit ably someone else would most likely start this chain of events at some point, but, would it have been around the same time, or would they have created the same game? If not Douglas and “Tic-Tac-Toe” then who and with what? This theory spikes off endless possibilities that I could only imagine.