The Whirlwind 1 [Fig.1] was a military machine built for the US Navy by the people at MIT in 1947 and was one of the first to involve video displays for recording their data. The intention for its creation was to replicate much more realistic aerodynamics than previous systems like the 'Link Trainer' (also know as the 'Blue box') so that it could be adapted to a much wider range of planes.It was reported to have crashed around every 20 minutes or so but even considering, it was still a much more advanced system than Babbage's Difference engine.
The Difference engine no.1 [Fig.2] was invented in 1832 by Charles Babbage and was possibly the first automatic calculation device. Sadly only 1 year later in 1833 the project that the government had already spent £17,000 was scraped when Babbage gave up. Unfortunately Historians calculated (you see what I did there?) that his actual design could actually work but was beyond the capability's of his time, they had neither the technology or the precision to complete a working machine. Obviously you're probably wondering at this point what on earth this has to do with Gaming but without the development and push towards new technology's where would we be today?Just over a decade after MIT finished the Whirlwind 1, what we now consider the worlds first video game was produced by a man named Dr. William Higinbotham, whilst looking into missile trajectories he wondered if the same principle could be applied to a game of tennis. He set off immediately, designing and building the motherboard and the rest of the components, within 3 weeks, during the middle of October, 1958 he was finished and already had thousands excited for the new 'Tennis for Two'. Using a standard Oscilloscope screen and two boxes with the controls he made. Unluckily no patent was ever put in place as it would have been owned by the government due to his work with them in his federal owned lab being very alike the game dynamics themselves.
'Pong' wasn't even released until 72' and in my opinion Tennis for Two offers a much more realistic set of physics, it looks quite visually stimulating rather than watching a dot bounce between 2 lines.
By the time it hit 1962 we had the first official video game ever to be written, also using an oscilloscope as a screen, 'Spacewar!' [Fig.3]
made at MIT by a young man by the name of Steve Russell all on a mini computer (PDP-1) donated by the company DEC. Influencing what most of us know today as the Game 'Asteroids' (Not developed until 79') Spacewar was in such high demand that it was distributed for free with the source code given to whoever wanted it, also coming pre installed on all new PDP-1 machines. Poor Steve Russell never made any form of profit for his teams contribution to video game history. Still quite the happy looking chap.
Referencing:
Kent C. Redmond (1980). Project Whirlwind: the history of a pioneer computer. Bedford: Digital Press. 280 pages.
http://www.sciencemuseum.org.uk/objects/computing_and_data_processing/1862-89.aspx
http://www.giantbomb.com/spacewar/3030-21514/
http://gizmodo.com/5080541/retromodo-tennis-for-two-the-worlds-first-graphical-videogame
http://museum.mit.edu/150/21
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