The First Video Game

here's a question for you what was the first-ever video game it seems like a simple enough question but it's trickier than you think the trouble is you'll get a different answer depending on who you ask and none of them seem definitive sorry let's take a critical look at the origin of video games starting with a brief history of the popular consensus for a long time the most common answer to the question was pong Ataris 1972 arcade game pong was a phenomenon the first game to break through into popular culture and for that reason quite a few magazines from the 80s and early 90s cited as the first ever game such as sinclair user in 1986 a 1987 issue of your computer the first issue of SD amiga format in 1988 and a 1990 issue of amiga world some do at least at a qualifier such as computer gaming world's claim in 1982 the pong was the first computer game of renown similarly as the first video game for the masses at a 1987 issue of ahoy so there was at least some awareness of an earlier history but not much in the way of in-depth research I suppose it was a different era Google wasn't a thing and even a trip to a local library wouldn't be much use as video games weren't exactly well documented so with pong being so prominent it was generally accepted as an origin point and while it does mark the popular emergence of games there lies a long and obscure history behind it the funny thing about pong is that it isn't even Ataris first game nevermind the first game ever before Atari were Atari they were called syzygy engineering and along with manufacture and Nutting associates they released a game called computer space and 1971 computer space was never as popular as ball selling maybe 1,500 units as opposed to the tens of thousands of pong arcade machines and the millions of subsequent clones but one of the cofounders of Atari Nolan Bushnell there was certainly no stranger to publicity and in interviews during the early 1980s he was quick to point out that pong wasn't his first game some of the gaming press picked up on this reproducing his words verbatim big K in 1985 cites computer space as the first marketed video game which might be correct and a 1993 Amiga format special is proud to reveal the pong isn't the first video game after all instead granting that accolade to computer space so for a long time Nolan Bushnell was seen as the father of video games but is the thing computer space wasn't exactly original it was based on an earlier game that Bushnell had played during his time at Stanford University again something he freely admitted that game was called space war and it first emerged in the computing labs of MIT by 1962 unlike computer space it wasn't an arcade machine it was never intended for commercial release it simply wasn't a viable option it ran on an expensive mini computer the PTB one which even in a basic configuration sold for a hundred and twenty thousand dollars in the 1960s so it was a purely academic exercise but one that was surprisingly popular on campus at least amongst those with access to the computing lab the July 1971 issue of analog science-fiction science fact describes it as the first true Space Age game and they aren't wrong this was just two years after the moon landings this is one of very few accounts that detail an interactive game before video games had a meaningful impact on popular culture it's interesting to see how they treat space war as a unique thing rather than as part of something else space war isn't seen as a video game space war is just space war over its life the game spread from institution to institution and became reasonably well known within the right community but it wasn't until the early 1980s the games started to reach wider public attention in 1981 one of the game's co-creators Martin gratz wrote an article for creative computing a fairly comprehensive eight page history of its development and operation however it was a 1984 book that did the most to bring space war to wider public attention Steven Levy's hackers heroes of the computer revolution detailed some of the exploits of MIT engineers over the last couple of decades with a whole chapter dedicated to space war so as time went on and more people learned about the game and it gained some recognition as the first computer game bytes magazine described it as such in 1990 this raid would be short-lived however as another earlier game kenta light soon after a game from 1958 called tennis for two tennis for two was the creation of a man named William Higinbotham an American nuclear physicist while working at the Brookhaven National Laboratory he created a game designed to show off the labs instrumentation at their annual exposition tennis for two was shown to the public in 1958 and once again in 1959 before being dismantled and largely forgotten about until 1982 at least a mention of the game appears in an issue of creative computing an article titled who really invented the videogame it details the hardware used an analogue computer with a 5-inch oscilloscope display and goes on to describe the gameplay it was a tennis game not dissimilar to pong with a ball following a realistic trajectory as each player head set back and forth it was quite a convincing simulation but considering it was using hardware designed to calculate the trajectory of ballistic missiles that might not be too surprising despite Higginbotham's subsequent radio interview with NPR in 83 the revelation of a video game that dated to as early as 1958 passed most people by most were still content in thinking that pong was the origin in 1993 author Ira Flatow sought to correct this as part of his book they all left a collection of invention stories from throughout history the final chapter is all about tennis for two flat Oh had worked at NPR so it's likely he's familiar with tennis for two through Higginbotham's interview in 1983 sadly William Higinbotham died in 1994 but his obituaries detailed his achievements including his game and subsequently tennis for two became well-known the new answer to the question of what was the first video game perfectly satisfactory looks like pong dates to 1958 that can't be much earlier can be today if you look at Wikipedia article on the early history of video games you'll see mention of a 1947 invention the cathode ray tube amusement device sounds like a delightfully archaic term for video games and we can verify its existence in the patent record number two 455 992 submitted on the 25th of January 1947 and grunted on the 14th of December 1948 its impacts must have been limited it's only recently come to prominence roughly as long as the existence of Wikipedia this reemergence can be traced to jet Marlins 2001 article The Secret Life of vector generators Margolin was an Atari engineer familiar with the golden era of arcade games and crucially is the named inventor on a number of patents relevant to early video game hardware this 1947 pattern first came to light in a more suit Magnavox versus Bali and circa 1976 the amusement device was cited as prior art in Bally's defense so someone working on Bally's behalf must have done the necessary legwork to uncover this after all there was a strong incentive Magnavox held a key patent on video games that earned them a hundred million dollars over its lifetime and cloning to the man behind the patent ralph baer video games were his invention the man had an interesting career he fled Nazi Germany in 1938 was drafted into World War two in 1943 and courtesy of the GI Bill attained the first ever BSC in television engineering in 1949 by 1961 he ended up as Sanders associates a defense contractor that specialized in electronic systems in September 1966 Baer laid out his ideas for an interactive television game and work began on a series of prototypes these prototypes culminated in the brown box design in 1968 so named for its wood grain effect vinyl covering this device connected to any standard television and could play a variety of games including a tennis game that has a startling similarity to pong seen here in a 1969 demonstration this was the system that would eventually be licensed and sold as the Magnavox Odyssey in 1972 the very first home video game system everything at Sanders was remarkably well documented perhaps because of their work for the military but this means there's a large body of dated documentation to accompany bears invention additionally unlike tennis for two at Brookhaven National Laboratory and space war at MIT Sanders was a commercial entity they existed for profit and were at liberty to patent her innovations and patent they did with bears work submitted in 1968 amended while pending in 1971 and granted in 1973 u.s. patent number three seven to eight for 80 a second was filed in 69 granted in 72 and reissued in 75 reissue 28 507 collectively the 480 and 507 patents gave Sanders and licensee Magnavox a very strong legal right to fundamental concepts behind early video games a rights which they exploited Magnavox filed lawsuits against Atari Bally Midway Chicago coin Mattel Activision and won all of them garnering substantial licensing fees Nintendo preemptively sued Magnavox for the US launch of the NES in 1985 in an effort to overturn these patents they lost as well patents are strong and Magnavox had precedence despite the legal victories Baer was regarded as something of an also-ran in the early video game stakes but he gains quite some recognition following the 2004 award of the National Medal of Technology his time spent forgotten this evidence in the frustrated tone of his 2005 book videogames in the beginning he lays his claim to the industry's Genesis and the disdain for Nolan Bushnell and Atari later success is particularly apparent he's also very dismissive of any precursors he writes off space war as impractical and tennis for too as akin to fiddling with an oscilloscope but it's hard to blame him he was definitely a pioneer Roth bear died in 2014 at the age of 92 his accomplishments and video games eulogized whether or not he invented video games he can laid legitimate claim to the first home video game but I feel there's more to video games than just consoles to complicate things further while tennis for two and the 1947 pattern steal the limelight anything between these milestones falls through the cracks take oXXO for instance a 1952 game developed for the EDSAC an early digital computer it's a simple game of noughts and crosses or tic-tac-toe if you prefer it's display uses a cathode ray tube in fact the computer has three of them used to indicate program and system status the middle tube is normally used to display part of memory and a 35 by 16 dominatrix a rather than store game State in binary oXXO exploited the visual memory display to create a game board filling up with X's and O's as the game is played then there's nimród part of the 1951 Festival of Britain a dedicated machine designed to play the game of NIM faster than thought played on a bank of Lights the player and AI taking turns to remove them attempting to leave the last light before their opponent Burtie the brain was another computing demonstration in the summer of 1950 the Canadian National Exhibition similar to the later oXXO 30 was a computer AI designed to play a game of tic-tac-toe on a display illuminated by an array of light bulbs so we have a number of candidates for the first ever game and we've painted a picture of our understanding over the last few decades paradoxically the further you go back the more recent the consensus of the first-ever video game and everything seems to converge on pong as video gaming developed so to to the appreciation of its history and as more scrutiny was given to the limits of popular memory the origin was pushed farther back first a space war then tennis for to the principle catalyst for this interest at least at first were the Magnavox lawsuits with a very strong financial incentive for someone to overturn these key patents but as we shed more light on the past another paradox emerges the more we uncover the less certain we become [Music] so we have a problem there's no shortage of candidates for the title of first video game as some of them feel like they might not qualify to landed a satisfactory answer to our original question we must first answer another what is a video game I told you it was tricky but a definitive conclusion needs a concrete definition defining the video game is hard but determining one less so the duct test is applicable here ie if it looks like a video game and plays like a video game then we can probably call it a video game so pong video game asteroids video game space invaders video game however with the earliest examples of games we start to approach the edge of the definition so we need to determine a hard delineation between video game a not video game the way I see it there are two essential elements the first is a video display of some kind and the second is interaction for the purpose of entertainment ie a game we'll start with the video parts the word comes from the Latin video meaning I see think of it as a counterpart to audio I hear however its modern meaning is slightly more specific it has the implication of an electronic signal driving a visual display distinct from film which is projected this normally means television but it can also include computer monitors oscilloscopes and liquid crystal arrays any display capable of receiving a signal and producing an image for this reason I think we can exclude games that use indicator lamps these tend to be electronically integrated into the logic circuit rather than driven by a separate signal now you could argue that any display is just an array of lights and that there need not be a minimum array size and I agree that we don't need to stipulate a minimum resolution but on the other hand a single light bulb doesn't constitute a video display the key difference lies in the generation of a video signal video signals come in a variety of forms but they are generally low voltage high frequency and transmissible between two different electronic circuits they often have a certain timing either a particular synchronization frequency or a separate clock accompanied with some form of image signal I don't think we need to stipulate any particular technical format the for our definition of video game we are going to need at least some kind of video signal this means that neither Bertie the brain nor Nimrod could qualify their banks of light bulbs don't meet our video signal requirement [Music] next consider the Nintendo Gameboy this particular breed of handheld LCD game presents another boundary compare the earlier game and watch I would consider this just an electronic game of the Gameboy a bonafide a handheld video game so what's the distinction I think both are borderline but there is a key difference in the way the LCD displays are driven The Game and Watch is essentially running on the same type of display as a calculator an active liquid crystal display with a quad multiplexed LCD driver the only difference is that the LCD segments represent gameplay elements instead of numerical digits the Gameboy however has a considerably more complex screen at 160 pixels across and 144 pixels tall there are over 20,000 segments to control each with four levels of brightness because of this the signal sent to the display resemble a conventional video signal there are horizontal and vertical sync lines along with a two-bit digital data channel it's not NTSC compliant but it could definitely be described as a video signal and in fact Hardware such as the super Gameboy can adapt them for use on a standard television if there is any doubt to the distinction the language used on their respective patents is another clear indicator The Game and Watch is described as an electronic toy having a game function whereas the Gameboy is a compact handheld video game system so we can draw a line between the two and we've established that a cathode ray tube is a nice to have but not an absolute necessity however even when dealing with CRT displays there are some that make the argument that not everything qualifies Ralph Baer for instance is quite specific with his definition Baer states that they've considered a true video game the device on which it is played must generate a raster signal capable have been displayed on a domestic television set fair enough I suppose and most games do fit this definition but it's a little too strict for my taste technically it would exclude many early computer games that targeted monitors rather than televisions the most crucially it excludes every single vector game while they're extinct today vector games were an important part of the golden arcade era including asteroids star castle the Vectrex console and the 1983 Star Wars arcade game there are dozens of examples I can't think of a good reason to discard them their graphics aren't painted by a raster signal but they are still painted by a signal a two axis XY signal that directly controls the electron beams deflection my gut says asteroids is a video game and so our definition of video game has to include vector displays but this has significant meaning when it comes to answering our question by keeping our definition broad enough to include vector video we have to also include some of the earliest candidates space war vector graphics tennis for two had vector graphics the 1947 patent would have used vector graphics so we can't yet exclude any of them but now we have a reasonably good sense of what the term video means we can move on to the other essential aspect the game we don't need to be too strict with this definition when we say game what we really mean is interactive entertainment but what our definition needs to do is separate video games from something like television itself for instance watching television is definitely entertainment and to some extent it is interactive changing channels or simply powering the device on qualifies as interaction the critical difference lies with the generation of the video signal in television these are broadcast remotely and the signal itself cannot be changed only switched between with a video game the signal is generated locally and crucially the players input has a direct influence on the signal generated the game responds to the player through the medium of video there are some recent exceptions to local signal generation services such as on live or Google stadia stream video over the internet but in these cases the player still controls the signal albe it through an additional network layer so a video game must give some degree of control over the video signal itself to be considered sufficiently interactive [Music] next consider a DVD menu technically the video signal is altered in response to user input options are highlighted and the menus are navigable in a nonlinear way all of the elements necessary for a video game are present in fact some DVDs even feature games and these are quli qualify as video games that said however a typical DVD menu definitely isn't a video game so what's the difference put it this way how do we separate non entertainment software from games consider a spreadsheet used for managing resources versus say resource management simulator their interfaces might be very similar and the mode of operation nearly identical the key difference is intent a spreadsheet for resource management is created to manage resources and there are some people who find that entertaining but entertainment is not the primary purpose the simulator on the other hand can be primarily intended for entertainment some simulators aren't they might be for training purposes such as a military flight simulator but if it's a commercial product that you can play on a home computer then there's a good chance you can consider it a video game the same applies to DVD menus while they are interactive and do serve to deliver entertainment their interaction is not intended to be intrinsically entertaining so intent is very important not only must interaction be present but the principle intended purpose of that interaction must be some form of entertainment so we've covered the broad strokes but there are some additional points of contention that might shape our final definition for instance does a videogame need to be implemented to be considered is a concept enough the 1947 CRT amusement device is only known to exist as a patent some sources claim prototypes were built but there's no evidence of this the inventors Thomas T Colt Smith jr. and si Raymond did work for an established manufacturer of television equipment Dumont Laboratories so it's not unreasonable to assume that they had the means to manufacture such a device but given the absence of any marketed product and the lack of any further development it seems the project wasn't deemed viable now it seems fairly logical to insist that the first-ever game actually existed but in a sea of prototypes and experiments it's less clear-cut than I'd like I think prototypes should still count but our definition should only include games with evidence of a practical implementation so is that enough to discount the 1947 device I think it depends on how strict you are with the definition of evidence a patent might be enough they describe the invention in detail and I'll subject to scrutiny before being granted the whether 1947 device falls flat however is with the gameplay itself while it does generate a video signal that is directly controlled by the player the game relies on other elements physical targets on the face of the display [Applause] without these you're left with a Trickett signal generator with an oscilloscope display a neat novelty but I do think this puts the 1947 device in the realm of electromechanical games rather than that of true video games [Music] [Applause] consider a pinball machine modern examples can be quite advanced even incorporating games played on a video display but I don't think anyone would make the argument that in modern pinball table is a video game the core gameplay is the mechanical ball and flippers the video display is accessory to that [Applause] conversely it's possible for a video game to have accessory elements think of an arcade games coin box marquee lights etc an arcade cabinet has more than just a video display going on but that's not a reason for exclusion as the primary game can be played solely through the video display whereas pinball relies on the mechanical elements the complete function so the 19:47 device might be the first use of a CRT the purpose of interactive entertainment but its use of mechanical elements as a core part of the game means it isn't a true video game it's an electromechanical game with a video element and this means it doesn't qualify under our definition our game has to be playable solely through the use of the video display accessory indicators or electronics aren't reason for exclusion but in terms of visual output the game has to be playable by the video signal alone and so that leaves us with a fairly robust definition one that consists of five points firstly a video game must exist it must involve some kind of video signal this signal should be in some way interactive and the principal intended purpose of this interactivity should be entertainment finally the game should be centered on and fully playable through the use of the video displays if a candidate meets these five requirements then I think we can consider it a video game so we have our definition the only thing left to do is apply it so the candidates the remain are pomp computer space bears brown box space war tennis for two and Ock so all of these are documented to exist so there's no question of practical implementation for any of them least of all pong in terms of video signal pong computer space and the brown box generate a raster signal suitable for an NTSC television or a space war tennis for two and oXXO generate an XY signal for display on an oscilloscope or vector monitor acos display is a little contentious while it did use a cathode ray tube and it was driven by a signal the display wasn't really intended to be a graphical one in fact the cathode ray tube wasn't chosen because of its display capability at all in the early days CRTs were used for storage one implementation was called the Williams Kilburn tube and it relied on a curious side-effect of energized phosphorus once lit by the scanning electron beam a charge would persist for a fraction of a second this secondary emission could be sensed and the phosphor recharged on the next scan meaning you could store an array of a couple of thousand bits indefinitely this was presented on the face of the display as a grid of illuminated dots the electron beam scanning rose in a fairly similar way to a blaster display however a sensor sheet on the face of the tube did cover up most of the visible pattern making this arrangement less than ideal for use as a display but quite often a second tube would be connected in parallel without the obstruction EDSAC the machine that ran oXXO didn't use a williams tube for storage it used mercury delay line memory instead but the contents of this memory were displayed on a diagnostic CRT in the same manner so while it was never really intended to be used for graphics the fact is it was and so it still qualifies [Music] back to the candidates in terms of interactivity I think most here counts again the only possible exception is oXXO because of the limitations of the display oXXO is considerably less dynamic than the other examples with the display only updating when a move is made that said the display does change in response to player input so it is interactive if not excited intent is the fourth criterion and it's fairly clear that pong computer space and bears brown box were all intended for entertainment that was their ultimate commercial purpose space war was definitely a diversionary pursuit and this frequently described as a game tennis for two was an exhibit intended for public display and it may have had an ulterior motive to Kindle an interest in science but the prime appeal was in the play now also oXXO was the product of study at Cambridge University a practical proof as part of the thesis if we take it as part of a PhD the work is purely academic but I think it's fair to judge it on its own merits as a piece of software it stands alone as what could easily be described as a computer game so while entertainment isn't the purpose of implementation it was the purpose of pain so the final test can the game be played with no other visual output than the video display pong and computer space qualify without question they are undoubtedly video games few would argue otherwise you could say that the brown boxes use of screen overlays for some of its games disqualifies it on this point and there is some merit to this in cases where the plastic overlay is absolutely necessary to play but for most of the games it's not just an accessory and the basic tennis game doesn't have an overlay at all so the brown box gets a pass it's a video game space walk run on the PDP one which was a modular system with a range of potential visual outputs the CRT monitor was central to the game but it wasn't the only output that spacewar used in some versions game scores were printed however these aspects are secondary to the actual gameplay so space war is a video game tennis for two is simpler it's only output was the oscilloscope display so it is a bonafide a video game what about oXXO like space war it ran on a full computer system with its CRT display line printer and banks of valves and dust blinking lights the question is is it possible to play a full game with only the video display the answer is yes with the caveat that you have to know what you're doing if you memorize which number corresponds to each grid position or at least make use of a printed reference and it's entirely possible to play without any other output it's clumsy and archaic your moves are in put on a rotary telephone styled dial but poor controls are no reason to discount it there are plenty of video games with terrible controls so oXXO is without doubt a computer game played on something which can be described as a video display under any reasonable definition I think that qualifies as a video game it might even be the first [Music] however to be sure it might be worth further investigation a closer examination of the environment that spawned oXXO may turn up some other potentials what we think of as video games really comprise multiple strands arcade machines television games electronic games and more recently virtual reality and mobile games which have rapidly become a significant part of the video games industry when we tease out these trends the reason why it's so difficult to pin down the first video game becomes apparent each of these strands has its own history its own progression and its own origin if we look at them individually the picture becomes much clearer the first arcade video game it's either computer space or galaxies game both from the end of 1971 the first television game Ralph Baer's brown box the first electronic handheld video game it could be the game boy unless you count the atari lynx prototypes from 1987 the first virtual reality video game possibly played via the VPL research iphone in 1987 or the virtuality from 1991 although research in head mounted displays goes all the way back to the 1950s and the first mobile game Tetris on the 1994 hagga nuke mt 2000 Nokia's snake it's an honorable mention so when we split video gaming into its components the question becomes much easier to answer and the oldest strand becomes obvious it's computing the first video game was almost certainly an early computer game like oxen it's just a question of determining the earliest example that qualifies the good news is computers weren't exactly common in the 1940s and 50s and fewer still had video displays in the brief window between the invention of the Williams tube circa in 1946 and oXXO in 1952 there are seven potential machines three of these potential computers were located at the University of Manchester where the Williams tube was developed the first was the Manchester baby operational in 1948 a prototype which was replaced by the full-scale Manchester mark 1 in 1949 this in turn was developed into and replaced by a commercial model the Ferranti mark 1 operational in early 1951 there were two other British machines the pilot ace at the National Physical Laboratory in Teddington London operational in mid nineteen fifty and EDSAC at Cambridge University which was first operational in 1949 at this time the Americans had two machines with a video display the whirlwind one built by MIT for the US Navy partially operational in 1949 and reaching full capacity in 1951 and the standards Western automatic computer or swak located in Los Angeles it's impossible to know every program that ran on these early machines but most of them are fairly well documented access was exclusive and programs are filed in a job queue there was normally a paper trail and there was an incentive for institutions to highlight their machines accomplishments unfortunately this transparency and a need to justify the computers existence when their games were a very low priority [Music] starting with the swag a commercial machine we can see most applications were either pure mathematics or scientific in nature such as searching for prime numbers developing climatological models the x-ray analysis of vitamin b12 processing time was split between the Institute for numerical analysis and other government agencies it's very unlikely that there were any games made for the swag next the whirlwind one was part academic part military it was intended to be used as a flight simulator not a graphical one but as something that could simulate aerodynamics and control flight instrumentation in addition it was used for industrial process control air traffic control and to demonstrate the potential of computerized air defense however half of the computing time available was allotted to MIT for engineering and scientific calculations and here there is evidence for slightly less serious use whirlwind capabilities were quite remarkable for the time with a generously sized CI t display capable of real-time graphics it was demonstrated live on American television in 1951 in a Christmas episode of see it now it even played a rendition of jingle bells later in a 1953 film making electrons count we can see well wind demonstrating a bouncing ball program it's the real-time calculation of three differential equations but in practice the CRT traces a convincing trajectory of a ball this demo dates to as early as 1949 but it doesn't count as a video game due to a lack of interactivity however some sources claim that there was a version circa late 1950 to 1951 that did have a degree of interactivity with the player able to adjust the ball trajectory in order to make it drop through the hole unfortunately there's no evidence of this the claims are anecdotal undated and might be misremembered so we must presume that the whirl winds bouncing ball was a non interactive demo and not a game next the EDSAC at Cambridge which we already know played host to walk so but was far more frequently used for scientific purpose atomic wave functions astronomical equations of motion crystallography in the structure of myoglobin and economic modeling so much more than a simple game of noughts and crosses but octo is what we're interested in although I should mention octo is not the original name of a s Douglass's program he referred to it as a game of noughts and crosses in his 1954 thesis the octo appellation seems to be a product of a preservation effort by the EDSAC replica project while Douglas didn't give an exact date for the program's creation he did specify that it ran circa 1952 so for the purpose of primordial T we must assume the worst the earliest date that we can be sure of is the end of 1952 if we wanted to be really cynical we could take the date that Douglas submitted his thesis March 1953 in either case this means that octo or noughts and crosses remains the prime candidate but was there anything else done with the EDSAC that could take the crown it turns out there is a whisper of another game attested in the thesis of Stanley Gill which was submitted November 1952 that would put it ahead of oxer it was a game of sheep and gates the screen vertically divided by a fence with two gates a procession of sheep approached these gates and you must open the correct one by interrupting a light beam in edsac state breeder primitive naturally and sadly there are no photos but it qualifies on the same merits as oXXO and does so with an earlier verifiable date but let's not draw conclusions yet more machines remain the pilot ace at the National Physical Laboratory in telling Tintin boasted strong floating-point performance ideal for the heavy scientific computations it was used for it was a prototype machine that wasn't particularly easy to program but it was still fast calculating integrals and prime numbers with aplomb it's here that I should introduce a man named Christopher Strait G a student of mathematics and physics at Cambridge and by 1949 a schoolmaster hand Harrow in early 1951 he was introduced to Mike wood ger at the NPL and given access to the pilot ice machine his work here was inspired by June 1950 article in penguin science news a theory of chess and noughts and crosses written by Donald Davies the ACE project lead of NPL the article was a mathematical breakdown of the decision-making and rules that governed games like chess part of the newly emerging field of game theory led by computer scientists like John von Neumann this was the dawn of artificial intelligence and there was a great interest in teaching these so-called electronic brains to think to teach them how to play games straight she was a teacher and he decided to undertake this implementation not noughts and crosses as that was too simple nor chess for that was far too complex instead he chose the intermedia game of drafts or checkers if you prefer with only two types of piece men and kings and only half the squares traversable it would be feasible given the confines of early computer capability of course programs of these machines were planned on paper before being compiled and punched tape and executed which meant that straight she didn't have the luxury of debuggers breakpoints or anything like that he would have to write and check his code manually he finished a preliminary drafts program by May 1951 but it wasn't until the 30th of July and straight she had the chance to run his program for the first time it didn't work however by this time there were more capable machines out there and the computing project that the University of Manchester had made considerable progress they had a full-scale production machine delivered in February 1951 the culmination of five years of development the first of the Manchester computers was the baby this was designed as a testbed in much the same way as the pilot ace so it's practical use was limited there were some exercises in pure mathematics highest proper factors long division and other arithmetic alpha Scylla T's but it wasn't long before the machine was rebuilt into a more expanded form the Manchester mark 1 was a full scale computer which while still a prototype started to see more serious use including the calculation of Mersenne primes investigation of the Riemann hypothesis symbolic logic ray tracing and the Gir functions even so it was a short-lived computer quickly replaced by its commercial version the Ferranti mark 1 eventually there would be nine such machines made including a later revision but the first mark one went to the University of Manchester here it served the university's computer needs until its replacement in 1959 notable uses include calculations for the armaments Research Establishment the British nuclear weapons program and the development of mark 1 Auto code a higher level means of programming the computer that was widely used the Ferranti machine also saw some work relating to games Derek Prince developed the first ever chess playing program in November 1951 it wasn't a video game it didn't use the Williams tube display for any graphical purpose but it was only a matter of time back to Christopher straight G and his implementation of drafts straight she first learned of the Ferranti mark 1 in the spring of 1951 and quickly took the opportunity to write to Alan Turing describing his interest in return straight she received a copy of torrents infamously opaque programming handbook for the Manchester computer and an invite to see the machine for himself he first visited Manchester in July and over the next year between careful study of the handbook and occasional visit he familiarized himself with the machine ransom programs and forged a reputation as a formidable programmer but as much as he had mastered the technical side there was something of an artistic streak that ran through his work he made the computer play music composed love letters and in the summer of 1952 he successfully ran his revised drats program and played a video game his implementation worked the computer was able to play a complete game of drafts at a reasonable speed generously he even took pictures of the video display and published his work so what does this mean it means the first video game is Christopher straight G strats first implemented circa 1951 but confirmed working complete with evidence by no later than July in 1952 also videogames are a British invention in any case we have an answer there are of course a couple of caveats firstly to be clear straight cheese drafts is the first video game for which we have evidence it remains possible that there was undocumented work prior but we can only draw conclusions from the evidence we have secondly our assertion only holds true as long as you subscribe to the definition we laid out a looser take might include the 1947 device or maybe something even earlier that said I think our definition is robust one thing is clear the 1947 device has had zero lasting impact on video games long forgotten until it was dredged up during the Magnavox lawsuits Christopher stretchy on the other hand was a bit of a pioneer is 1952 presentation at the University of Toronto inspired Arthur Samuel Slater work on machine learning straight she developed the CPL programming language an important ancestor of C his influence is broad and it permeates computer science in regards to the first video game I was equal parts pleased and dismayed to discover that I wasn't the first to arrive at this conclusion there are two others one is Jack Copeland professor of philosophy at the University of Canterbury Christ Church New Zealand and an authority on the life and work of Alan Turing as a product of his detailed research into early computing history and chewings correspondence with straight G he describes the operation of straight G's drafts program and calls it the world's first computer game it's not the first computer game but we can assume he means the first computer game with a video display the second to draw this conclusion is Alvy Ray Smith co-founder of lucasfilm's computer division and Pixar his 2015 article the dawn of digital light is a detailed examination of the origins of computer-generated digital images that make some rather bold statements the first digital picture the first computer animations the first video game a ranked straight she first kills sheep and gates second and Douglass's noughts and crosses third i'm inclined to agree in broader coverage stretches drafts is sometimes included in the early history of video games but is seldom upheld as the champion it's a difficult call to make given the lack of a universal definition of video game and the rather ragged margin at its farthest extent but I feel as though we have our answer the mid 20th century was a real frontier for electronics by 1950 transistors were in their infancy an integrated circuits were a decade away the only place video games could have started prior to the age of pong was in the computer lab here there was high technology with no concern for commercial viability and vast budgets were approved ostensibly for more serious computations but the games slipped through the cracks but here's the thing nobody called these early computer experiments video games at least not at the time it's a retroactive label given only once video games had pierced popular culture and the term video game dates to later than you might think so one final question when did video games become video games [Music] a search on Google books Ngram viewer gives us an idea of the time frame the term emerged at some point between 1970 and 1975 coinciding with pongs early success this is born out with a search through the popular gaming press scarce as it was in the 1970s the February 1976 issue of byte magazine uses the term pong style video game in a familiar way a broader search of literature and google books doesn't turn up anything prior to 1975 however Google newspapers does have a 1974 feature on space-age pinball machines that details the rise of the new coin-operated video games which means the term must have started to gain traction by this point there's a 1973 article in Businessweek that must have been written just after pong it found early commercial success it describes a red-hot market for video games in what might be the earliest instance of the term in a major publication there are also a couple of false positives that crop up in 1974 issue of New Scientist uses the term to mean video business as in the video game it was around this time that the first video playback devices were hitting the domestic market earlier still there are some surprising mentions of video game in the 1950s but it turns out this is an older term for televised sports games back when such a thing wasn't universal it's increasingly clear that pong is close to the origin so let's skip straight to the source here's the promotional flyer for the 1972 Atari arcade game the newest two-player video skill game from Atari corporation syzygy engineered the team the pioneered video technology so in 1972 pong was described as a video skill game which is almost but not quite what we're looking for there is a definite emphasis on the term video Atari's next game space race released July 1973 does use the term videogame within its flyer text and later that year in September the flyer for pong doubles featured it prominently at the very top Atari's new video game so 1973 was the year that the term video game shot to prominence and was fixed within the arcade lexicon but where's the first use in researching this I found a particularly good post from the Golden Age arcade historian titled the etymology of videogame it confirms our suspicions Atari and pong are very much at the center of the term tracking the first use in the trade press - March 1973 interestingly there is also a letter from Nolan Bushnell to John Brits at Bally dated July the 10th 1972 in which Nolan uses the term this might be the first documented use it seems videogame was the term used by Atari to describe their new product to potential purchasers their new owners rather than players so two things the term video game dates to around 1972 reaching wider popularity by 73-74 and it seems it was devised for the benefit of the arcade amusement industry as a marketing term to distinguish this new class of machine so while Nolan Bushnell contact credit for many original ideas it seems he is the man that named the industry and the one that kick-started its commercial success there's an argument to be made that the first video game was the game first described as such and it seems the answer to that is pol pong was the catalyst and Ataris games are likely the main reason who used the label video game but to cover all kinds of interactive entertainment if pong had failed and it was the 8-bit microcomputers that found the earliest success then computer games might have been the definitive term in fact in certain regions at certain times this has been true for the Americans settled on video game and their influence means most of the world has adopted the term as the standard it's far divorced from its original meaning the term meant to distinguish early arcade games from their electromechanical counterparts but it seems it's stuck and has since been applied to all sorts of things [Music] computer games arcade amusements television games handheld electronic games mobile games and virtual reality what we know is video games don't have a single origin there are constellation so if anybody asks you what was the first-ever video game you could tell them it was straight cheese drafts 1952 but it might be easier to say there it's probably pong or something because well it's trickier than they think [Music] thank you very much for watching and until next time farewell

Channel: Ahoy

Views: 1,436,411

Rating: 4.9666367 out of 5

Keywords: first video game, video game, pong, computer space, spacewar, tennis for two, ralph baer, nolan bushnell, brown box, 1947 crt device, oxo, edsac, bertie the brain, nimrod, early video game history, computer game, christopher strachey

Id: uHQ4WCU1WQc

Length: 60min 50sec (3650 seconds)

Published: Fri Oct 04 2019

Reddit Comments

[u/ClowxReed]

Hint: it's not pong and not tennis for two. Also it's an hour long video by Ahoy. Just saw it and gives a detailed explanation of early "Video games", pre Atari era games.

[u/PigLadAl]

Ahoy is god-tier, watch his documentary about Polybius if you haven’t, it’s great stuff.

[u/DevolvingSpud]

Well worth the watch; also works as a “listen” because the video isn’t that important overall.

[u/PF4ABG]

According to the 1st Unifying Theory of Youtube Videos, Ahoy's videos are always good.

[u/hirmuolio]

https://www.reddit.com/r/pcgaming/comments/dd8yj0/ahoy_the_first_video_game/

[u/zaydyplayz]

I'm so glad Ahoy is back. I remember watching his BO2 weapon videos wayyy back, being very interested in their origin.

[u/LordLoko]

So, that means the first videogame was a PC Computer game. 🤔

Also, here's OXO on an EDSAC simulator

[u/_Mavial_]

Ahoy makes amazing videos! Its a shame they're not on a schedule or even guaranteed to come out but I guess that's the price for a single person production with the quality of a Kurzgesagt video.

[u/Sir-Drewid]

Ralph Baer and his Brown Box are mentioned in the video essay. There's a statue of Baer in my city that names him as the father of video games.