The Origins of Video Games

The origins of video games dates back to 1947, when a patent was filed in the US by Thomas T Goldsmith Jr and Estle Ray Mann for a gadget known as the 'Cathode-Ray Tube Amusement Device'. This machine used eight vacuum tubes to simulate a missile firing at a target, and required the player to adjust the curve and speed of the missile by using various dials. The targets were drawn on a simple overlay placed on the screen.

In 1952, AS Douglas of the University of Cambridge created a game known as 'OXO', a graphical version of noughts and crosses on the EDSAC computer, which used a cathode ray tube for a visual display. The player competed against the computer (which used basic Artificial Intelligence) using a rotary dial.

The first video game made available to the public was called 'Tennis for Two', created in 1958 by William Higinbotham, the Head of the Instrumentation Division at Brookhaven National Laboratory, New York. This game used an oscilloscope to show a tennis court from the side, featuring a gravity-controlled ball that needed to be played over the net. The game was played with two controllers, both equipped with a dial for trajectory and a button for hitting the ball. Tennis for Two was exhibited for two seasons to entertain visitors during visitor days at the national laboratory, before it was dismantled in 1959.

The limited accessibility of early computer hardware meant that the majority of early computer games ran on university mainframe computers. In 1961, a game entitled 'Spacewar!' was developed by a group of students at MIT, in which two players had to control a spacecraft capable of firing missiles at each other, whilst avoiding a black hole in the centre that created a large gravitational field. The game was eventually distributed with new DEC PDP-1 computers and traded throughout cyberspace, and is therefore credited as the first widely available computer game.

During the 1960s, an operating system called Multics (Multiplexed Information and Computing Service) was developed in a cooperative project led by MIT. One of the developers, Ken Thompson, worked to develop (and play) a game called 'Space Travel' on this system; however, although the game was never released commercially, it led to the development of the first UNIX operating system.

In 1966, the first video game to be displayed on a standard television set was created by Ralph Baer. Known as 'Chase', the game led to the development of the light gun and a console that was able to run several different games such as table tennis and target shooting (find out more in First Generation of Video Consoles).