Starting from Scratch (was Re: OT: Modern college education

From: Ethan Dicks <erd_at_infinet.com>
Date: Fri Oct 23 13:17:41 1998

>
> On Fri, 23 Oct 1998, Ethan Dicks wrote:
>
> > Not on a PDP-8. There was a vector graphics board set. It used an
> > oscilloscope for a display tube. As was proven in a patent lawsuit
> > filed against Nintendo, video games did exist before Pong, just not
> > in the living rooms of America.
>
> Oooh, this sounds cool. Do you have any more details behind this or a
> URL?

If you mean the PDP-8 vector board set, I have no details at hand except
those in the Small Computer Handbooks of the 1960's. I am aware of some
pre-OMNIBUS stuff for the -8, -8i and LINC that did this. I do not know
what was compatible with what or what the IOTs were.

If you mean the lawsuit, I can shed some light. The story was told to me
by a ringside participant, Charlie Lasner, of some fame in Usenet circles
for his strong views and his long detailed posts. It seems that sometime
in the 1980's, some patents relating to video games fell into the hands
of some greedy, bloodsucking, intellectual property laywers who decided
to extort money from the video game industry with them. Most companies
paid a "license fee" with little fuss. Nintendo balked. They sent out
the call far and wide for "prior art". Word reached cjl; living in Queens,
it was no big trouble for him to be an expert witness on antique computers.
At a demonstration at his house, cjl fired up a PDP-12 (or LINC-8, I forget
which he has) with the vector scope, loaded a paper tape and showed the
judge and assembled crowd a video game (with paper listings) that could
be documented to have existed several years before the patents in question
were granted. This was sufficient for the judge to invalidate the patents.

That is the story as I remember hearing in 1993 while standing in the
middle of the biggest pile of PDP-8's I've ever seen in my life.

-ethan
Received on Fri Oct 23 1998 - 13:17:41 BST