History
Main article: History of video games
See also: First video game
Early games used interactive electronic devices with various display formats. The earliest example is from 1947—a "Cathode ray tube Amusement Device" was filed for a patent on January 25, 1947, by Thomas T. Goldsmith Jr. and Estle Ray Mann, and issued on December 14, 1948, as U.S. Patent 2455992.[3]
Inspired by radar display tech, it consisted of an analog device that allowed a user to control a vector-drawn dot on the screen to simulate a missile being fired at targets, which were drawings fixed to the screen.[4]
Other early examples include:
- The NIMROD computer at the 1951 Festival of Britain
- OXO a tic-tac-toe Computer game by Alexander S. Douglas for the EDSAC in 1952
- Tennis for Two, an interactive game engineered by William Higinbotham in 1958
- Spacewar!, written by MIT students Martin Graetz, Steve Russell, and Wayne Wiitanen's on a DEC PDP-1 computer in 1961.
