Space War?

From: Wayne M. Smith <wmsmith_at_earthlink.net>
Date: Fri Jul 6 01:16:45 2001

>
> I thought the first game was AD on early CDCs and later on
IBM S/36s?
>
> Peace... Sridhar
>
> On Thu, 5 Jul 2001, Bob Shannon wrote:
>
> > As I understand it, the first video game ever was space
war, written at MIT.
> >
> > Does anyone here know anything about a port of space war
for the HP2115?
> >
According to an unverified source:

SPACEWAR: n. A space-combat simulation game, inspired by
   E. E. "Doc" Smith's "Lensman" books, in which two
spaceships
   duel around a central sun, shooting torpedoes at each
other and
   jumping through hyperspace. This game was first
implemented on the
   PDP-1 at MIT in 1960--61. SPACEWAR aficionados formed
the core of
   the early hacker culture at MIT. Nine years later, a
descendant
   of the game motivated Ken Thompson to build, in his spare
time on a
   scavenged PDP-7, the operating system that became
{{UNIX}}. Less
   than nine years after that, SPACEWAR was commercialized
as one of
   the first video games; descendants are still {feep}ing in
video
   arcades everywhere.
Received on Fri Jul 06 2001 - 01:16:45 BST