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Meet the person behind the world`s first video game : William Higinbotham
Are you bored from the week already?
Our Flash-back Friday section might help you recharge with game stories that you haven’t heard before. Many of you probably never heard of this story but you will find it surprising that the first atomic bomb and the first video game have something in common.
The person behind the game is William Higinbotham.
Ever heard of him? Probably not.
He is an American physicist who was working on the radar system at MIT and later specialized in electronics, working for the U.S. government at Los Alamos National Laboratory.
During the second world war, William and his team created the electronics for the first-ever atomic bomb.
After the war, Higinbotham made a drastic career change. He joined Brookhaven National Laboratory`s instrumentation group. The job was to organize the visitor exhibits at the lab which were quite a big thing back then (thousands of people would come to the tour).
Willliam saw that some of the visitors were bored from his tours, and he came up with an idea. This is how the first-ever video game was invented.
The game was simple: “Tennis for Two”. It was developed on a small analog computer that would display a path of a bouncing ball. The game is considered as the ancestor of the popular 1970`s “Pong” except that the score had to be calculated manually. Nevertheless, the game became a big hit for the visitors of the Lab and many of them would be waiting in long lines to play.
Now that you have heard the story of William Higinbotham feel free to share it.
Enjoy the weekend and see you next Friday!
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