First Video Games

The history of video games is filled with events and earlier technology that paved the way for the advent of video games. It also includes games that represent direct steps in the evolution of computerized gaming, and lastly the development and release of video games themselves.

1942: NIM

Raymond Redheffer of M.I.T had an article published in 1948 about how to play a NIM device he allegedly created through 1941 to 1942. Also in 1978, he demonstrated the device publicly.^[3]
A device procured by the toy collector Mike Mozart is potentially the one Raymond Redheffer created and has some similarities to specifications of the published paper.^[4]

1947: Cathode Ray Tube Amusement Device

The earliest known interactive electronic game was by Thomas T. Goldsmith Jr. and Estle Ray Mann on a cathode ray tube.^[5] The patent was filed on January 25, 1947 and issued on December 14, 1948. The game was a missile simulator inspired 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]

1950-1951: Chess

In March 1950, Claude Shannon devised a chess-playing program that appeared in the paper "Programming a Computer for Ferranti computer."^[6]

1951: NIM

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.^[7] NIMROD could play either the traditional or "reverse" form of the game.

1952: OXO / Noughts and Crosses (Tic-Tac-Toe)

In 1952, Alexander S. Douglas made the first computer game to use a digital 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.^[8]

1958: Tennis for Two

Tennis for Two recreation

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.^[9][10]

1959: Mouse in the Maze, Tic-Tac-Toe

In 1959-1961, a collection of interactive graphical programs were created on the TX-0 experimental computer at MIT. These included Mouse in the Maze^[11] and Tic-Tac-Toe.^[12] 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.^[12]

1961: Spacewar!

In 1961, MIT students Martin Graetz, Steve Russell, and Wayne Wiitanen created the game Spacewar! on a DEC PDP-1 mini-computer which also used a vector display system.^[1][10] The game, generally considered the first Shooter game,^{[citation needed]} spread to several of the early mini-computer installations, and reportedly was used as a smoke test by DEC technicians on new PDP-1 systems before shipping, since it was the only available program that exercised every aspect of the hardware.^[13] Russell has been quoted as saying that the aspect of the game that he was most pleased with was the number of other programmers it inspired to write their own games.^[14]

The Magnavox Odyssey released in 1972

1966: Odyssey

In 1966, Ralph Baer resumed work on an initial idea he had in 1951 to make an interactive game on a television set. In May 1967, Baer and an associate created the first game to use a raster-scan video display, or television set, directly displayed via modification of a video signal - i.e. a "video" game.^[15] The "Brown Box", the last prototype of seven, was released in May 1972 by Magnavox under the name Odyssey. It was the first home video game console.^[1]

1971: Galaxy Game

In 1971, Bill Pitts and Hugh Tuck developed the first coin-operated computer game, Galaxy Game, at Stanford University using a DEC PDP-11/20 computer; only one unit was ever built (although it was later adapted to run up to eight games at once).^[16]

1971: Computer Space

Two months after Galaxy Game's installation, Computer Space by Nolan Bushnell and Ted Dabney was released, which was the first coin-operated video game to be commercially sold (and the first widely available video game of any kind, predating the Odyssey by six months). Both games were variations on the vector display 1961 Spacewar!; however, Bushnell and Dabney's used an actual video display by having an actual television set in the cabinet.

1972: Pong

Pong, also by Bushnell and Dabney, used the same television set design as Computer Space, and was not released until 1972 – a year after Computer Space.