Space War?

From: Mike Cheponis <mac_at_Wireless.Com>
Date: Thu Jul 5 21:17:59 2001

A question is: was SpaceWar on the PDP-1 the -first- video game? Clearly
there had been CRT output devices on computers before the PDP-1, but did
anybody write any games for them?

-Mike


On Thu, 5 Jul 2001, Wayne M. Smith wrote:

> 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 Thu Jul 05 2001 - 21:17:59 BST