The World's First Video Game
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16 BY MONA S. ROWE TheThe World’sWorld’s FirsTFirsT In 1958, William Higinbotham, an atomic scientist at Brookhaven National Laboratory on Long Island, concocted a tennis game visitors could play—on a video screen. The rest, as they say, is history… ust over 50 years ago, William programs. In earlier years, smile and quickness in his Higinbotham came up with an Brookhaven had annual manner, Willy came across as idea for entertaining visitors “visitors’ days” in the fall, someone who loved life and at Brookhaven National Labor- when thousands of people lived it with zest. He chuckled atory in Upton, Long Island. came to tour the lab and see as he told me about the long He never imagined that his exhibits set up in the gymna- line of people snaking around tennis game of 1958, displayed sium. Mostly the lab displayed the gym, all eager to play on a small oscilloscope and dry posters about its basic “Tennis for Two,” as he had played with simple controls, research in the physical and life dubbed the game. “Tennis for would inspire a new industry: sciences. “Willy” Higinbotham, Two” was part of the division’s in the U.S. alone, total sales who was then head of the exhibit for two years, and it of video game hardware, soft- lab’s instrumentation division, was a real crowd-pleaser. “If VideoVideoware, and peripherals topped knew from GAMe GAMe past visitors’ days I had realized just how signifi- $22 billion in 2008, according that people were not much cant it was,” Willy joked, “I to the Entertainment Software interested in static exhibits. So would have taken out a patent Association. he decided to create some- and the U.S. government Brookhaven—taxpayer- thing with more punch to it— would own it!” supported, with funding initially a hands-on video tennis game. Public recognition for from the Atomic Energy I first interviewed Willy Willy’s game came late. Prior Commission and later from back in 1981 for an article in to the 1981 article, the only the Department of Energy— the Brookhaven Bulletin, the mention of Brookhaven’s has always been open to the lab’s employee newspaper. novel exhibit was in the intro- public through various visitor A small man with a friendly duction to a book titled Basic NEW YORK archives • SPRING 2009 17 BROOKHAVEN NATIONAL LABORATORY Computer Games by David Ahl, that Willy sent him prints ball to reappear and remain later the publisher/editor of of it. Years later we learned stationary until a hit button Creative Computing magazine, that this boy had become was pressed. BROOKHAVEN NATIONAL LABORATORY who wrote that Brookhaven the president of one of the The game was run by an might have been where video first companies to market analog computer hooked up to games started. Ahl had gone the product commercially.” an oscilloscope. “It was simple to high school on Long Island, to design,” remembered and he toured the lab in 1958. Basic Electronics Willy. “Back then, analog He wrote that he knew about Willy’s 1958 game had essen- computers were used to work computer gaming done at tially the same basic features out all kinds of mechanical MIT and at a small company found in today’s video games. problems. They didn’t have William Higinbotham in Cambridge, Massachusetts Simulated on a screen was a the accuracy of digital com- Top: The original video game as early as 1961, but was vertical side view of a tennis puters, which were very crude “Tennis for Two,” set up for the not aware of it being done court showing the edge of a at the time, but then you annual visitors’ day at Brookhaven anywhere else prior to 1958, floor with the edge of the net didn’t need a great deal of National Laboratory in 1958. the year in which he spotted perpendicular to it. Each play- precision to play TV games.” the video tennis game at er had a knob and a button. Willy said it took about three Brookhaven. Rotating the knob changed weeks to put the game Willy Higinbotham’s the angle of the ball, and a together. It was actually built Brookhaven colleague, David press of the button sent the by Robert V. Dvorak, a techni- Potter, added another strand ball toward the opposite cian in the instrumentation to the historical thread. Writing side of the court. If the ball division. Willy said the two of on the occasion of Willy’s hit the net, it rebounded at them worked collaboratively. eightieth birthday celebration an expected angle. If the ball Based on Willy’s drawings, in 1990, Potter recalled a went over the net but was official lab blueprints were high school boy who was not hit back, it would hit the done by Alexander Elia, a especially interested in the floor and bounce again at a design engineer in the same tennis game: “He wanted natural angle. If it disappeared division. Willy said the blue- schematics and really wanted to off the screen, a reset button prints showed a few relay know how it worked. I believe could be pressed, causing the contacts in the wrong position, www.nysarchivestrust.org 18 but the game worked beauti- Willy died in 1994, fully, so they must have been fixed in the actual circuit. well aware of how The electronics consisted mostly of resistors, capacitors, wildly popular video and relays, but where fast games had become. switching was needed—when the ball was in play—transistor He told me once that switches were used. As Willy Brookhaven Lab researchers (left to right) Scott Coburn, Gene pointed out in 1981, “These Von Achen, and Peter Takacs used archived blueprints to recreate one of his daughters days, this sort of simulation the world’s first video game. liked to play them, is done with solid-state switches, not with relays. but he himself had Where I needed it, I took a The Legal Side like a modern video game. step in the right direction.” Was Willy’s game the first? Here’s what Willy knew never gotten hooked. For the game’s debut, the “Tennis for Two” was actually about the legal side of the oscilloscope display was only preceded by three other question. Sanders Associates five inches in diameter. The inventions—one in the late applied for the first video game next year saw improvements: 1940s and two in the early patent in 1964. The patent the display jumped to seven- 1950s. What was special was purchased by Magnavox, teen inches in diameter, and about Willy’s game was that which put out the first simple players could choose to play he had created a unique game in 1971. Magnavox then tennis either on the moon way to alternate among the sued all other entrants to the (with low gravity) or on Jupiter computer’s outputs with the field, the first in a continuing (with high gravity). After the transistor switching circuit, series of lawsuits and counter- exhibit was dismantled, the creating the image of a tennis suits involving other giants computer and oscilloscope court and allowing players like Atari and Nintendo. were separated and used for to control a movable ball that Around 1976, a competi- other jobs. was seen on a screen, just tor’s lawyer discovered David Ahl, who had played “Tennis BROOKHAVEN NATIONAL LABORATORY for Two” at Brookhaven Lab. Through Ahl, the lawyer tracked down Willy, who had the 1958 blueprints to prove the game’s date of creation. Other lawyers followed. In February 1982, Willy made a deposition in the first lawyer’s office before the Magnavox lawyers and others. In June, Willy, David Potter, and Seymour Rankowitz, another Brookhaven colleague, BROOKHAVEN NATIONAL LABORATORY were scheduled to testify at a trial in Chicago to break the Magnavox patent. The case was settled out of court before going to trial. Peter Takacs, researcher at Brookhaven National Laboratory, with the recreated “Tennis for Two.” NEW YORK archives • SPRING 2009 19 BROOKHAVEN NATIONAL LABORATORY History-Making Science in 1984 after thirty-seven years THE ARCHIVES C O N N E C T I O N Willy died in 1994, well aware there. Two years later, Brook- of how wildly popular video haven’s historian interviewed BY JANE KOROPSAK games had become. He told him as part of an oral history series that included leading me once that one of his s documented by wiring for the computer and scientists at the lab. But in daughters liked to play them, logbooks filled with the other shows the “fast seventeen pages of transcribed A but he himself had never yellowed copies of archived transistor switch” that Willy text, he never once mentions gotten hooked. He was more press releases, Brookhaven thought was the real innova- the video game he invented to concerned about being National Laboratory began tion of the whole game— entertain visitors, though he remembered for his work with hosting visitors’ days as since the switch used new talks about playing his accor- the Federation of American early as 1949. technology (of the time) called dion in square-dance bands, Scientists, founded in 1945 In 1958, after students transistors, which allowed organizing bartenders for lively as the Federation of Atomic and the general public the creation of a switching parties when the lab was Scientists by himself and others visited the lab during the circuit that took three outputs starting up, and singing Christ- who had worked on the annual visitors’ days, Willy from the computer and mas carols at an “old folks’ Manhattan Project.