1973
Tennis for Two is demonstrated
One of the earliest electronic video games, Tennis for Two, is demonstrated at Brookhaven National Laboratory in New York.
Created by physicist William Higinbotham, the game was designed to make the laboratory's annual Visitors' Day more entertaining. It simulated a game of tennis on the screen of an oscilloscope, with a moving dot representing the ball and a horizontal line representing the net.
Two players controlled the game using separate hand controllers, each equipped with a button and a rotating dial that determined the angle at which the ball was hit.
The system used a Donner Model 30 analogue computer to calculate the movement of the ball, while the oscilloscope provided the graphical display. The game even simulated different gravitational conditions; a later version allowed players to select the Moon or Jupiter.
Hundreds of visitors queued to play the game during the exhibition. Although Tennis for Two was never commercially released and existed only as a scientific demonstration, it became an important milestone in the development of electronic games and the video-game industry.
Earlier electronic game-like inventions existed, so Tennis for Two is more accurately described as one of the earliest video games rather than definitively the first.
Created by physicist William Higinbotham, the game was designed to make the laboratory's annual Visitors' Day more entertaining. It simulated a game of tennis on the screen of an oscilloscope, with a moving dot representing the ball and a horizontal line representing the net.
Two players controlled the game using separate hand controllers, each equipped with a button and a rotating dial that determined the angle at which the ball was hit.
The system used a Donner Model 30 analogue computer to calculate the movement of the ball, while the oscilloscope provided the graphical display. The game even simulated different gravitational conditions; a later version allowed players to select the Moon or Jupiter.
Hundreds of visitors queued to play the game during the exhibition. Although Tennis for Two was never commercially released and existed only as a scientific demonstration, it became an important milestone in the development of electronic games and the video-game industry.
Earlier electronic game-like inventions existed, so Tennis for Two is more accurately described as one of the earliest video games rather than definitively the first.
