The first computer was rooms full of vacum tubes and other large electronic gizmos. Manned by men and women wearing engineering smocks, pocket protectors and wide rimmed black glassess. Ok I exaggerate a little, there was one cool guy, and that man was A.S. Douglas. He wrote his PhD on Human-Computer interraction. He created tic-tac-toe that used cathode ray tubes for a display, and it was programmed on the EDSAC.
To think only a short time ago, 48 years ago, the computer game market was started. Because not to long after Douglas created the idea of tic-tac-toe someone created the first true video game. Sure it used an oscilloscope and not the beautiful LCD flat panels of today. And we owe it to William Higinbotham for "Tennis for Two" as it was called.
Computer games have evolved quite a bit since then, but didn't make the jump to a TV screen until Ralph Baer created "Chase" and was originally conceived while working for a television company, called Loral. Computer games on TV gave us the likes of Atari Computers, which in 1975 brought pong into the home. The precurser to such classics as 'Asteroids' and 'Lunar Lander' which turned out to be the first games to be copyrighted.
With computers getting cheaper and faster, and more portable, this gave computer game designers of the future to design games that are beyond anyone's imagination. Who knows what is next, 
holographic video games on a holodeck, Aka 'Star Trek'.
holographic video games on a holodeck, Aka 'Star Trek'.
Computer games are a great topic, especially considering how prevalent gaming has become in modern society. If only Douglas knew what he was creating. I'm not going to sit here and say all video games are bad, since I myself have played them. There are, however, people who take gaming too far.
ReplyDeleteIt would be funny to see how the creator of the first computer game had the opportunity to see the monster that he has created. Some people's lives have been ruined on behalf of them playing too many video games.