The history of computer games 1940s-1970s
As with all great things, they all have small beginnings. It
all started back in 1947, more than 60 years ago 2 American’s namely Thomas T.
Goldsmith Jr. and Estle Ray Mann (Heh, Rayman :D) requested for an invention
they described as a “cathode ray tube amusement device” (which sounds like
quite a fun torturing device) This was issued on December 14th 1948
and it was described as a machine which had knobs and buttons to control the
cathode ray tube beam much like an Etch a Sketch and would simulate firing at
airborne targets. |
| Thomas T Goldsmith, Jr |
Goldsmith and Ray Mann were both engineering students at
Furman University. They both were inspired by radar displays used in WW2. It’s
funny to think how the world’s best inventions were originally created for war
and destruction or at least originated from war, such as the internet and
computers for example. Oh humans.
In 1952 A.S Douglas from the University of Cambridge created
the world’s first graphical computer game. Tic-Tac-Toe. He was another University
student and was writing his PhD degree on human-computer interaction and wanted
to demonstrate his Thesis with the game. The game was programmed on an EDSAC
vacuum tube computer which had a cathode ray tube display. The player would
compete against the computer which was a big step towards the entertainment
factor.
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| TX-0 Computer |
By 1955 the TX-0 was created it was designed at MIT Lincoln
laboratory and whilst previous computers would require a whole floor of
equipment and machinery just to run itself, the TX-0 was the first computers
that was significantly reduced in size and would fit in a smaller room as well
as being able to run faster than the previous computers! We still see the development today,
technology is getting smaller and faster every year now. It’s basically in
overdrive!
I think one of the big early games was Tennis for Two which
eventually led to the making of Pong in the 70s. It was created using an
oscilloscope and analog computer by William Higinbotham in 1958 and was used to
entertain visitors of the Brookhaven National Laboratory in New York. He was an
American Physicist and he was another man who created his game to entertain,
just like Goldsmith and Ray Mann.
As we can see the majority of computer games so far were
created by university students as their hobbies and were run at labs at
universities, it wasn’t really a system where people would play in their homes
or anywhere locally as of yet. They would require the universities mainframe
computers to run on which meant they were small in number and they weren’t regarded
as important or popular by the public.
 |
| Spacewar! |
1961 saw the creation of a game called “Spacewar!” on a new
computer called the PDP-1 it was developed by Steve Russell with a group a
students at MIT, yet more university graduates. The game was one of the first
to start of the Player vs. Player era as it put two human players controlling
spacecrafts. It was eventually distributed with the new DEC computers and
traded on the primitive Internet! Which is quite amazing to think that they had
a basic internet back then.
By the end of the 60s we saw the creation of more prototype
games and several new computers and things were getting smaller and easier to
handle. The prospect of video games running on consoles at arcades or at home
was becoming more apparent.
In September 1971
Galaxy Game the earliest known coin operated computer game console was
installed at Stanford University, two months before the release of “Computer
Space” which was created by Nolan Bushnell and Ted Dabney, It was the first
mass produced video game which was based on “Spacewar!” Nutting Associates had
bought the game and manufactured 1500 copies of Computer space machines, while
it was unsuccessful due to its difficulty it was the first mass produced video
game.
Bushnell and Dabney went on and founded Atari, Inc in 1972
before releasing one of the most successful and well known games around: Pong.
It was the first game which was widely successful. Atari went on to sell over
19000 Pong machines. And I have to say it was one of the more enjoyable retro
games I’ve played. Well even if it was a imitation of the real pong.
The next big game was Gun Fight, probably the first
pioneering games of the FPS Genre. As it was an on foot multi directional
shooter designed by a Japanese, Tomohiro Nishikado and was released in 1975. It
included game characters and violence and human combat. Which evolved the
outlook on videogames, Developers were starting to think outside the box
instead of just plain old animated squares and rockets. Gun Fight was then
adapted for the American release using the Intel 8080 making it the first game
to use a micro-processor
Nishikado was soon inspired to use a microprocessor for the
blockbuster hit in 1978 Space Invaders which grossed $2billion worldwide by
1982. Damn! That’s a hell of a lot for one of the earliest video games! What a
start! We can always count of the Japanese to do things 10x better than
everyone else haha
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| Gun Fight |
The first home console was created by Raph Baer and his
associates back in 1968 and it was a working prototype called the “Brown Box”
it was eventually licensed by Magnavox and
By the end of the 70s they had created and sold over 2 million copies of
the first consoles. The Magnavox Odyssey!
So we now have 2 huge video game manufacture’s Atari and
Magnavox competing against each other, It was going well until a couple of
crashes in the industry came along due to consistent clones of existing games
like Pong. This led to significant losses in the market. Luckily Atari revived
the home video game market with Space Invaders.
The golden era of video games was almost over and the arcade
console era was awaiting everyone in the 80s.
 |
| Magnavox Odyssey |
The origin of video games did start with university science
students who were ambitious and thought outside the box for a change, and they
developed and created new technologies thanks to their hobbies and love for
computers and fun. I think that’s how most technological developments in
today’s world came about, with ambition and a simple concept/idea.
I hope you enjoyed this blog post and learned a thing or two
about where computer games originated from. Next time I shall talk more about
the golden age of computer games and arcade games!
http://geek-life.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/tennisgame.jpg
http://archive.computerhistory.org/resources/still-image/dec/pdp-1_online/tx-0.two_men_working_on_computer.1980.102631218.lg.jpg
http://www.movingimage.us/images/exhibitions/media/spacewar-detail-main.jpg
http://cdn2-b.examiner.com/sites/default/files/styles/image_content_width/hash/ce/fe/cefe51a5f02ea19ae108984cc2827b71.jpg
http://media.giantbomb.com/uploads/10/106002/1503030-gun_fight_3.jpg
http://www.playerschoicegames.com/magnavoxodyssey1.jpg
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