The Prehistory - 1947 to 1971

The earliest video games were self-contained units, capable of playing only the simplest games, and costing thousands of dollars. They were based on early computer technologies (remember those computers that you had to walk into a room to play?).

1947 - A Drawing Starts It All

On January 25, 1947, Thomas T. Goldsmith Jr. and Estle Ray Mann filed a patent for a "cathode ray tube amusement device". A cathode ray tube (CRT) is the technology used on televisions and computer monitors prior to the advent of LCD and plasma displays. The technology was primitive; a transparent overlay, with graphics drawn onto it, was placed over a CRT. The player would use a knob to control the CRT beam, which displayed as a dot, and a fire button. If the dot was over coordinates defined by the airplanes or other objects to be "shot at", the CRT beam would defocus, simulating an explosion. It was a "video game" only in the loosest terms, being constructed purely out of analog electronics - with no television or computer involved. It was never actually produced (or if it was, no example survives today).

This was the first ever "video game." Just a schematic drawing. 














Early 1950s - One Game Supercomputers

Three playable games came out for supercomputers in 1951-1952. The first, Nimrod, was a special purpose computer built to play the game Nim. It was exhibited in summer 1951 at the Festival of Britain, and was intended to demonstrate digital computer technology to the public.
On July 30, 1951, Christopher Strachey first played a game of checkers on the Pilot ACE supercomputer at the National Physical Laboratory in England; the checkers program completely exhausted the then-year old supercomputer's memory, and was quickly ported to the Manchester Mark 1, a more modern computer, by October.
1952 saw the release of OXO, a graphical version of tic-tac-toe, running on an EDSAC computer at the University of Cambridge.

A photo of Nimrod, taken in the early 1950s. 















1958 - Tennis for Two
Tennis for Two was another piece of specialized equipment, exhibited only twice - first on October 18, 1958. It consisted of an oscilloscope display connected to an analog computer, and was the first electronic game that was not based on a board game. It showed a side view of the tennis court, with the net in the center.

Tennis for Two. Just like the title says.















1960s-1970s: Spacewar and more supercomputer games

In 1961, Spacewar was programmed at MIT for a PDP-1 supercomputer. It was a two player game where the players would duel each other in space, thus making it the first "action" game. It spawned clones released over the remainder of the 1960s, the 1970s, and beyond.
From this time, supercomputer games became relatively popular, although they lived in the shadows (they were considered a questionable usage of expensive computer resources). By the early 1970s, dozens of supercomputer games over a range of operating systems were available at universities and other places around the USA and the world.

Spacewar on its original PDP-1. Photo by Joi Ito of Inbamura, Japan.