Gaming : Tennis for two (First Gen)

What was the first video Game?

Key Figures:

William Higinbotham

Date of Birth : October 25, 1910

Date of Death : November 10, 1994 (84)

Nationality : American







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

Tennis for Two

Tennis for Two "Console"

Digging through the pages of video game history one can stumble upon what most people call the first game ever created. It was a very simple game yet ground breaking for its time. Tennis for two it was called, created by William Higginbotham. A physicist who was one of the people who worked on the Manhattan project. It was completed  on October 18th 1958 long before any other official video game was ever released, long before the famous Pong game that was released November 29, 1972. One might notice how pong relates to tennis for two in terms of game play though they are both quite different, showing progression from one technological innovation to another.

Tennis for two is the one of the first games to feature the graphical display. One of the reasons this game was invented was to make visitors day at the Brookhaven National Laboratory in Upton, New York more interesting, this event was generally very boring but with the implementation of this game some records say that people were lining outside the doors waiting for a chance to look at and play this game. Looking at this game from modern day perspective one might giggle at the this statement but that period in time, this truly innovative project caught the attention of scores of people making one realize what a major impact this was to the industry at the time.

How did it work ?

The mind behind tennis for two was generated by a small analog computer, an instruction book of the computer described how it generates curves on the cathode ray tube of an oscilloscope by using resistors, capacitors and relays. Examples in the book showed trajectories of bullets, missiles and a bouncing ball which where all subjected to gravity and wind resistance. Seeing the example of the ball Higginbottom was reminded of a tennis game which lead to the idea of tennis for two.

Higginbottom used four of the computer's operational amplifiers to generate the ball's motion and the other six where used to sense when the ball hit the ground or net, which in turn switched control to the other person on the other side of the "court". To display all objects on screen at once it was a must to time-share these functions.

“The real innovation in this game is the use of those ‘new-fangled’ germanium transistors that were just becoming commercially available in the late 1950s,” said Peter Takacs of Brookhaven Lab’s Instrumentation Division, who is currently working to rebuild a playable Tennis for Two. “Higinbotham used the transistors to build a fast-switching circuit that would take the three outputs from the computer and display them alternately on the oscilloscope screen at a ‘blazing’ fast speed of 36 Hertz. At that display rate, the eye sees the ball, the net, and the court as one image, rather than as three separate images.”

When tennis for two was first introduced in 1958 it was displayed on a 5 inch in diameter oscilloscope. Later in 1959 the game was improved upon, increasing the screen size between 10 and 17 and also providing several new options on how to play the game, such as tennis on the moon(low gravity) or tennis on jupiter (High Gravity).

Was it actually the first Game?

Some people speculate on wether it was the first game due to pre existing machines. such were :

1940s: Cathode Ray Tube Amusement Device

The game was a missile simulator inspired by radar displays from World War II.

1952: OXO - "Noughts and Crosses"

OXO was a computer-programmed version of "Tic-Tac-Toe", created for an EDSAC (Electronic Delay Storage Automatic Calculator) computer.

The Original Video Game

First Video Game?

Where to download a similar free version of the game : 

http://www.gamersquarter.com/tennisfortwo/

References

pongmuseum. 2015. The First "Electronic" Game Ever Made?. [ONLINE] Available at:http://pongmuseum.com/history/FirstElectronicGameEverMade.php. [Accessed 02 March 15].

Brookhaven. 2015. The First Video Game?. [ONLINE] Available at:http://www.bnl.gov/about/history/firstvideo.php. [Accessed 02 March 15].

MLAB. 2015. Digging into Tennis for Two. [ONLINE] Available at: http://maker.uvic.ca/tennis/. [Accessed 02 March 15].

gamersquarter. 2015. Tennis For Two. [ONLINE] Available at:http://www.gamersquarter.com/tennisfortwo/. [Accessed 02 March 15].

Wikipedia. 2015. Tennis for Two. [ONLINE] Available at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tennis_for_Two. [Accessed 02 March 15].