When was the first video game invented ?

and who invented it ? and
should we celebrate that day ? - lol

60s a ping pong game by some physicist on an oscilliscope type thing. Then copied by Atari.

Apparently this guy:

http://www.bnl.gov/bnlweb/history/higinbotham.asp

Nope... Spacewar. Look it up. There was an earlier game which was hacked together by the Model Railroad Club at MIT which involved the lights on the front panel of the IBM series 2 ( I think that was the model ) but SPACEWAR was the first one on the DEC. Copied by ATARI

The dude with the tennis game invented a SIMULATION not an interactive experience. What I have read was that no players were necessary as the computer modeled the whole thing so it wasnt a game.

Now the first computer game??? Turing started working on that in the 1940's (Chess) no video though.

Alan Turing was gay, and he topped himself with cyanide.
Nice to think that a nutter left us with the lovely computer we have today. :)

well.. tennis for 2 uses paddles... it is in that video...

Tennis for 2 was the first video game, created in 1958.
Spacewar wasnt created until 1962.

man and i always thought it was pong - but that was in pubs only

what was the first in home game anyone?

ENAY being gay and not being able to face prison that makes you a nutter does it... nice...

http://yahooligans.yahoo.com/content/ask_earl/page?d=20051019

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_games

You read my mind.

And mine. Considering what he did during WWII, he's a hero...

I am still not completely convinced about the "Tennis" since I haven't seen any reference to player control anywhere... Spacewar was before 1962 though... 1960. And there was one other at MIT which involved relays (Those Model Railroad guys again...)

I remember reading HACKER: A history of the computer revolution BUR (as a proviso) I can't remember clearly... 12 years at least.
:)
What was the first 3D style game... didn't have to be in actual 3D. Was it Alternate Reality?

Haha, I was joking of course. But our computer science University lecturer who taught us about him was clearly was a bit of a homophobe.

Nah, this 1958 example was the first but then you've got Spacewar as well as Ralph Baer's contribution which is usually referred to as the first actual video game.

http://www.pong-story.com/rhbaer.htm

I sit corrected! :)

I do, however, remember the issue of BYTE which described the Homebrew Computer Clubs attempts at connecting the keyboard from an IBM typewriter and a old black and white TV.

I went to my father and said: You could make the computer play games on this with pictures... My father said "That is a silly idea!" (for the record) My father also said to two of his buddies from NASA that portable computers were ridiculos... no one will want one your idea is too risky for me to invest in. Those guys went on to found COMPAQ.

Alan Turing didn't invent the Difference Engine, why is he considered the father of the computer? He may have finished the first major hardware device to fullfill its design potential - but the difference engine worked perfectly when it was built (at a later date) without a single modification to the design, but most importantly, the smaller (partial) prototype worked - and that was the first computer.

Also, the difference engine can still handle more floating point places and numbers with longer digits than the latest Cray supercomputers, it just doesnt do it as quickly...

The first one was this realy good one, where the Germans invented new codes, and the player (the Allies) tried to de-code it.

*did* decode it ;)... Although enigma wasn't a German invention at all, it was a commercially available product invented in I think Sweden, certainly one of the Scandinavian countries. It was meant originally for international business to send telexes.

I'm not sure it was really a computer though, more of a miss-wired typewriter. Although the same could be said of Bletchley Park's creations.

In any case neither really spearheaded the invention of the modern computer in the sense that we know it.

Whenever you look at history it's often hard to pinpoint when something was "invented" because most inventions are natural evolutions of something that went before.

I think Turin's creations are heralded as the first because they where programmable, but then again, so where Victorian weaving machines... They even used punch card...

I believe Fr*ck! to be an earlier video game than any cited here because it had a caveman in it. With a YoYo.

[aside] I have been skimming General Discussion lately, due to time pressures.... was there a party to welcome Becks back ?

/BlackJumper turns up fashionably late and tries to steal beer/

[/aside]

I think Battlezone is older. Incidentally, what do "3D style" and "actual 3D" mean? Nothing in the computer is actually 3 dimensional, it's all visual tricks.

@Banshee. The Funny thing about the enigma machines, is that the British government kept it secret that they could de-code it. And then sold them to the commonweath nations as secure code machines for TOP secret comunications :)

Yes, but I think the thread got deleted because it mentioned a Blitz related project in it *boggle*.


I never knew that. Cunning little rascals aren't we ;).

Battlezone.... I completely forgot about that game (and I used to kick buttocks at that game!!!) Yeah wireframe would still count as 3D because after all it was scalaing in the Z axis...

There was something just before Wolfestien 3D though... some sort of Japanese game that used a similar idea... anybody rmember that?