The First Computer Video Game Invented
Before Pong entered living rooms in the 1970s, the world's first video was invented in October of 1958 by nuclear physicist William Higinbotham at the U.S. government's Brookhaven National Laboratory in Upton, New York.
Other People Are Reading
-
Tennis for Two
-
As head of Brookhaven Lab's Instrumentation Division, Higinbotham wanted to find a way to get visitors more interested in the kind of innovations that were going on at the lab. He came up the idea of a game that might make the exhibits at the open house more appealing to visitors. "Tennis for Two" debuted at the lab's annual visitor days. It was a two-player game that utilized separate controllers connected to an analog computer, while an oscilloscope acted as a monitor.
The Game
-
Tennis for Two featured a side view of a tennis court, and the ball was represented by a dot that "bounced" from one side of the net to the other. The controllers had buttons and rotating dials to control the shot, though there were no rackets visible. According to the Brookhaven Laboratory's website, hundreds of visitors--likely unaware of the history being made at the time--waited in line to play the game.
-
Creating the game
-
It took Higinbotham about two hours to design the game, and a couple of days to get all the components together. Robert V. Dvorak, a technician at Brookhaven, constructed the game in about three weeks.
-
References
- Photo Credit tennis ball image by timur1970 from Fotolia.com
