1947: Cathode Ray Tube Amusement Device[edit]
Main article:
Cathode ray tube amusement device
Circuitry schematic of the Cathode Ray Tube Amusement Device, patented in 1948
The earliest known interactive electronic game was by
Thomas T. Goldsmith Jr. and
Estle Ray Mann on a
cathode ray tube.
[3] The patent was filed on January 25, 1947 and issued on December 14, 1948.
[4] The game was a
missile simulatorinspired by radar displays from World War II. It used analog circuitry, not digital, to control the CRT beam and position a dot on the screen. Screen overlays were used for targets since graphics could not be drawn at the time.
[1]
1947–1958: Chess[edit]
Alan Turing, a British mathematician, developed a theoretical computer chess program as an example of machine intelligence. In 1947, Turing wrote the theory for a program to play chess. His colleague Dietrich Prinz
[5] wrote the first limited program of chess for
Manchester University's
Ferranti Mark I.
[6] The program was only capable of computing
"mate-in-two" problems and was not powerful enough to play a full game.
[7] Input and output were offline, there was no "video" involved.
1951: Nim[edit]
A drawing of the
NIMROD computer.
On May 5, 1951, the
NIMROD computer, created by Ferranti, was presented at the
Festival of Britain. Using a panel of lights for its display, it was designed exclusively to play the game of
Nim; this was the first instance of a digital computer designed specifically to play a game.
[8] This machine was based on an original design built by
E.U. Condon in 1941, after having acquired a patent in 1940. The machine weighed over a ton, and a duplicate was displayed at the New York World's Fair.
[9] NIMROD could play either the traditional or "reverse" form of the game.
1951: OXO / Noughts and Crosses (Tic-Tac-Toe)[edit]
Main article:
OXO
In 1951,
Alexander S. Douglas made the first computer game to use an electronic graphical display.
OXO, also known as
Noughts and Crosses, is a version of
tic-tac-toe for the
EDSAC computer at the
University of Cambridge. It was designed for the world's first
stored-program computer, and used a rotary telephone controller for game control.
[10] There is a description of another "fun" program for EDSAC.
[11]
1951: Strathcey's Draughts Program[edit]
Main article:
Christopher Strachey
Christopher Strachey developed a simulation of the game
draughts for the
Pilot ACE that ran for the first time on 30 July 1951 at
NPL.
1958: Tennis for Two[edit]
In 1958,
William Higinbotham made an interactive computer game named
Tennis for Two for the
Brookhaven National Laboratory's annual visitor's day. This display, funded by the
U.S. Department of Energy, was meant to promote
atomic power, and used an
analog computer and the
vector display system of an
oscilloscope.
[12][13]
1959: Mouse in the Maze, Tic-Tac-Toe[edit]
In 1957–1961, a collection of interactive graphical programs were created on the
TX-0 experimental computer at MIT. These included
Mouse in the Maze[14] and
Tic-Tac-Toe.
[15] Mouse in the Maze allowed users to use a
light pen to place maze walls, dots that represented bits of cheese, and (in some versions) glasses of martini. A virtual mouse represented by a dot was then released and would traverse the maze to find the objects.
Tic-Tac-Toe used the light pen as well to play a simple game of naughts and crosses against the computer.
[15]