History of Video Games

History of Video Games

Video games are a part of millions of peoples' lives today all across the globe. People use them to have fun with their friends, workout, and just to have some fun! But have you ever wondered about the vast history of video games? Well here are the answers.

Early History

As with many inventions, video games started as something much more simpler than what it is today. Contrary to popular belief, Pong was not the first video game. The first thing close to a video game was a machine that the inventors, Thomas T. Goldsmith, Jr. Estle Ray Mann, filed a patent for on January 25, 1947. Described as a "cathode ray tube amusement device" by the creators, the patent detailed a machine that used knobs and buttons to control a cathode ray tube, which simulated shooting airborne targets.

Three years later in 1949, a man named Charley Adama created a program for the Whirlwind computer at MIT that featured video game-like physics. The program was vey basic by today's standards, consisting of only a bouncing ball that was non-interactive.

In 1951, Christopher Strachey wrote a draughts program for the NPL Pilot ACE computer in England. Unfortunatley, the program exceeded the memory capcity of the computer. Strachey than preceeded to recode the program to a computer in Manchester with a bigger memory capacity.

In the same year, a man named Ralph Baer conceived an amzing idea. While working at Loral, an electronics company that was developing television technologies, Baer thought of the idea of enabling a televison owner to manipulate their TV set in an interactive fashion. Due to the comapny already behind schedule however, the idea was immediatley not allowed by the supervisor.

In 1952, A. S. Douglas created a tic-tac-toe program on the EDSAC computer at the University of Cambridge he called OXO. He made the game in order to demonstrate his thesis on human-computer interaction.