The Origins of Pong

Gamasutra is running a feature about the origins and development of Pong, and how it helped to kick start the gaming industry. Quoting: "... games found their way onto even the earliest mainframes, starting the ongoing trend of implementing video games wherever a viable platform presented itself. The first known instance of an actual implementation was Alexander Douglas's 1952 creation of OXO (also known as Naughts and Crosses), a simple graphical single-player-versus-the-computer tic-tac-toe game on the EDSAC mainframe at the University of Cambridge. Although more proof of a concept than a compelling gameplay experience, OXO nevertheless set the precedent of using a computer to play games. The first known precursor of Pong debuted in 1958 on a visitors' day at the Brookhaven National Laboratory in Upton, New York. It was there that William Higinbotham and Robert Dvorak demonstrated Tennis for Two, a small analog computer game that used an oscilloscope for its display."

according to the discussion page

[wjh31]

on the very article you linked to, even OXO was predated by a missile game in 1947 http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=History_of_computer_and_video_games&oldid=50887750#The_beginning [wikipedia.org]

Re:according to the discussion page

[cheesecake23]

on the very article you linked to, even OXO was predated by a missile game in 1947

Exactly. And then, after endless draws in OXO, the computer finally suggested a nice game of chess.

Re:

[cheesecake23]

Exactly. And then, after endless draws in OXO, the computer finally suggested a nice game of chess.

[Afterthought] Luckily for the computer, chess rarely leads to drawed games. Poor bastard. I imagine it suggested Russian Roulette next.

Re:

[pines225]

The 1947 missile game may not have been built (we only know that it was patented), though the circuit diagrams would have allowed it. Which may be why the article calls OXO the first actual implementation in 1952.

But there were other working games before 1952. Two machines for playing the game Nim were built and demoed to the public before 1952: the Nimatron http://www.goodeveca.net/nimrod/nimatron.html [goodeveca.net] was built by Westinghouse in 1940 and played 100,000 games against members of the public, winning 90%

Dupe?

[fotoguzzi]

http://games.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/10/23/236213 [slashdot.org]

The origins?

[MagusSlurpy]

Now, I'm not one to RTFA, but wouldn't that be table tennis?

Re:

[JustLikeToSay]

It should have been called "waff" - consult the Mayor of London for more details

Noughts not Naughts

[1u3hr]

The game is "noughts and crosses" in British English, and in that dialect "nought" means zero; (the circles in the game). "Naught" means "nothing" or "a failure". Variants of the same root, but used distinctly.

Analog computers rule!

[Rick Genter]

I'm reminded of my high school days (early-to-mid 70s). We had these "analog computers"; basically there were these boxes that had an analog meter for displaying results and a patch panel where you used jumpers to connect various knobs (resistors), timing circuits (capacitors), and switches. We wired three of these things together to build a planetary landing simulator - it started as a lunar lander simulator, but then we added a knob for tweaking gravity :-). One meter was altitude, one was vertical speed

Brown Box by Ralph Baer?

[tedgyz]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ralph_H._Baer [wikipedia.org]

Most people credit Ralph Baer with the invention of Pong and video games in 1966, in Nashua NH, at Sanders Associates (now part of BAE).

I have a personal slant on this version of history. My dad worked with Ralph as a component engineer, acquiring some unusual transistors and ICs for the project.