In context, Andrew Ervin, author of Bit by Bit: How Video Games Transformed Our Lives, explains it this way: “Imagine trying to create a playable version of Minecraft on a contraption made out of Lincoln Logs, wires, and a few 9-volt batteries hooked up to an Etch A Sketch.” Even though the screen was small – about 5 inches in diameter, “Everybody stood in line to play. “It took me about two hours to rough out the design and a couple of weeks to get it debugged and working,” Higinbotham said. “Players served and volleyed using controllers with buttons and rotating dials to control the angle of an invisible tennis racket’s swing.” Tennis for Two, as it was called it, was played on an oscilloscope and used an electrical charge to show the path of a bouncing ball. Within two days he created what some people believe to be the very first video game. “I look at it and say, well, obviously, with this machine I can fix it so instead of having it pre-programmed, people can control it.” The laboratory had several analog computers and “a book which tells you how to do a bouncing ball and some other things,” Higinbotham explained. ![]() ![]() So Higinbotham looked around for inspiration. And every year the scientists tried to find ways to make the visit more exciting for their less than scientific-minded guests. To show off their work, every year, the Institute held an open house – or Visitor’s Days. Higinbotham had lost his two brothers in the war. ![]() Now a decade later, “Willy” and others were studying the application of nuclear energy in more practical and peaceful means. In the fall of 1958, physicist William Higinbotham was part of a research team at New York’s Brookhaven Laboratory when he came up with an idea that had nothing to do with nuclear science.Ī nuclear weapons specialist during the war, Higinbotham or “Willy” as his friends called him, was instrumental in helping develop the first nuclear bomb. Do We Thank a World War II Nuclear Weapons Specialist for Video Games?
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