What Was The Very First Video Game?
Have you ever thought about what would have been the very first video game? Pong? Space Invaders? Pac-Man? Not even close. You have to go all the way back to 1947 to discover the very first game, known as the Cathode Ray Tube Amusement Device.
In January of 1947 a patent was filed in the United States by Thomas T. Goldsmith Jr. and Estle Ray Mann for an interactive electronic game called the Cathode Ray Tube Amusement Device. It used analog circuitry to display a missile game on a cathode ray tube (basically an early television screen). Basically this was a simple missile simulation game in which a player could move a dot on a screen. The Cathode Ray Tube Amusement Device was a gigantic, bulky early computer hooked up to a cathode ray tube. The patent was eventually approved in December of 1948.
Does this qualify as the very first video game? Some historians suggest it does, and I tend to agree with them, but others argue the Cathode Ray Tube Amusement Device is only a precursor to video games and not a true video game because it did not utilize raster (bitmap) graphics nor did it use a digital display. Personally I think this is skipping the point since the term “video game” has become a semi-generic term to mean many different types of electronic games that make use of a viewing screen.
But to go further a few years, in 1952 University of Cambridge Professor Alexander S. Douglas created the first game to use a digital display. The game was known as Naughts and Crosses, and is basically the game to tic-tac-toe.
Then in 1958 the game Tennis for Two was created by physicist William Higinbotham for the Brookhaven National Laboratory. Used was an analog computer with an oscilloscope as the display device utilizing vector graphics.
Then in 1961 along comes Spacewar! It even sounds like a video game, doesn’t it? Two MIT students, Wayne Wiitanen and Steve Russell are credited with making this game with vector display graphics.
So far, none of these games mentioned were ever released to the general public.
Now we got to the first home gaming system for sale to the public. It was originally known as the Brown Box, but when it hit the stores in 1972 it was officially called the Odyssey, made by Magnavox. The Odyssey, created by Ralph Baer who had been working on the project off and on for nearly 20 years, could be hooked up directly to a television. The earlier prototype, the Brown Box, then is the first video game system to use raster graphics.
So, does the Brown Box or the Odyssey qualify as the first video game? Opinions will vary, of course, and you can make your own decision, but I’ll stick with the Cathode Ray Tube Amusement Device from way back in 1947.
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Excellent post, very interesting!
Nice post, actually the first video game I encounter as far as my memory is concern was super mario brothers..lol..I thought that was the oldest. Damn, I never thought that on the 1940’s there has been a video games created. Thanks for the info
Nice share
i tough tetris or pacman the first game, nice info
Wow, I remember the atari in the late seventies/early eighties. Space Invaders and Donkey Kong (the predecessor to the Mario Bros). I think you’re right, the original idea allowed the rest to grow.
Very interesting!
Blessings.
Sincerely,
-Joie Schmidt.
I would have voted for Pacman…interesting share.
I agree with you it was a game and did use TV style viewing so it should be the first.
First game I ever played was Jazz Jackrabbit 2.
I believe that there is no specific “first video game,” but I would say that the Magnavox Odyssey is defiantly the first console ever created. Great post!
Wow. Nice article. Video game history.
Wow, I thought it would have been Pong, but I was so wrong. Nice post.
Sincerely,
Nelson Doyle
the first thing i thought of was pacman.
Did I leave a comment on here that got deleted?
Wow never knew that.
Good share
Good info
the good old days of video games
Very interesting, thank you for the share! I’d indeed have thought Pong or anything of the like would have been the first video game =)
In 1966, my friend’s mom, Juliana Hwang, was a computer specialist at Stanford. We would go to her office to play “space wars.” It was the prototype and certainly not to be found anywhere but at Stanford. I think it was really the “first” computer game!
neat
Nice! I want to know more about it though. How did it work and what was the game like?
Nice article!
I thought I knew the answer, but was wrong. I thought it was atari ping pong which my sister and I got for Christmas.
I would be more convinced if there was evidence I could see on this post, my knowledge is that the very first video game, which definition should be more clearly defined here, was an actual pong version game that was wired to a TV way back by a special group of tech nerds,…hmm
very interesting read, i would have thought it to be pong. anyway please read my article on how to make free easy money. http://webupon.com/money-making/earn-free-money-points-games-consoles-and-more/
Pong was the first real video game. Unless you count sonar, and that was no game.
I appreciate your effort to research for this kind of information…
I always thought it was the Atari Ping Pong the first one. Playing with that was such a cool thing at thattime. It makes me laugh now.
very interesting article. Here I’m thinking Atari was the first. Atari is still my favorite though in that it was the bomb when I was growing up.
I think the problem is, are we talking about the first video game ever or the first sold commercially?
“Personally I think this is skipping the point since the term “video game” has become a semi-generic term to mean many different types of electronic games that make use of a viewing screen.”
That’s actually a bit backwards. Applying the modern generic term in hind site dangerously skips the point that the video in video game is there for a reason. It describes the presence of a video signal, something a vector display all the way back to the Cathode Ray Tube Amusement Device do not have. The term was created out of a descriptive of the technology. Likewise CRT does not equal an “early television”. CRT is simply a tube device that uses a cathode ray to light up phosphorus material on the front of the tube. It does not imply the display method. Secondly, there was no computer involved in the CRT Amusement device, it was an electromechanical device (think pinball) that used the CRT as a prop. All motion, collision, etc. was mechanically controlled and pre-arranged. It had physical gears to move the CRT beam, gears and devices to tell when the beam physically moved to a spot where a target was pre-planned to be glued to the front of the screen, gears to make the beam hard to move, etc. It could have just as easily used a flashlight or lightbulb with a sheet, the CRT was just a mechanical prop.