Video games. History of invention and production

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HISTORY OF TECHNOLOGY, TECHNOLOGY, OBJECTS AROUND US
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Video games. History of invention and production

The history of technology, technology, objects around us

Directory / The history of technology, technology, objects around us

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In the modern world, video games are taken for granted, they are so commonplace that no one even thinks about which inventor gave the first impetus to this now multi-billion dollar industry.

In the days of the hula hoop and frisbee, it was hard to imagine that a dim picture on a small screen could revolutionize the entertainment industry.

Several people claim to be the "father of video games". The first is Ralph Baer, an electronics engineer at Sanders Associates, who developed the first game console in the late 1960s (in 1972 it was released by Magnavox under the name Odyssey). The second, Nolan Bushnell, was the author of the classic Ping Pong, which debuted in 1971 in a bar in Sunnyvale, California. The machine with two handles, during the rotation of which the “racquets” moved up and down the screen, caused such a stir that it soon broke down - it simply overflowed with coins.

Video Games
Pong game screen

Encouraged by the success, Nolan founded Atari in 1972 with a $500 investment (he sold it to Time Warner in 1976 for $28 million). Meanwhile, neither Nolan nor Baer were the first. A man who has nothing to do with the gaming industry managed to get ahead of them by a decade.

Brookhaven National Laboratory (BNL) was founded in Upton, New York in 1947 to conduct research related to the peaceful aspects of the nuclear program. Residents of neighboring towns were very wary of the activities of scientists. To reassure the public of the safety and usefulness of the ongoing research, BNL periodically held open days and showed visitors equipment and photographs.

One fine day in 1958, nuclear physicist William Higinbotham, head of the Instrumentation Development Division, had the idea to "spice up" the visitor program. He knew that ballistic trajectories could be calculated and displayed on an oscilloscope screen, the green background of the cathode ray tube reminded Higinbotham of a grass court, and he decided to design an interactive game using tennis as a model.

Video Games
Game "Tennis for two"

For a man involved in the creation of the first radars and control devices for atomic bombs, the task was not difficult: the overall design was developed in a couple of hours, assembly took three weeks. The analog circuit, built from resistors, capacitors, relays, and new transistors at the time, displayed a side view of the playing field, net, and ball on a round 5-inch oscilloscope screen. Air resistance and gravity were adjustable, by turning the controller knob it was possible to adjust the angle of impact on the ball.

The first ever video game, tennis for two, debuted on October 18, 1958. The success was such that visitors were ready to stand in line for an hour to join the game. A year later, the situation repeated itself, but soon the device was dismantled and video games were forgotten for a whole decade. Higinbotham did not receive a patent for his creation: he was a civil servant and, moreover, considered the invented game nothing more than pampering.

Author: S.Apresov

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