History of Gaming: Part 1.

If you ask many people about the history of gaming they'd probably mention something fairly modern, like Spacewar! or Pong as a starting point, which were both released in the 1960's. However this isn't the true history of computer gaming. It actually starts much further back than you might think, with the Ancient Greeks and what can be described as the very first computer, the Antikythera Mechanism.

In 1900 a group of Greek sponge divers found a Roman shipwreck with various Greek treasures aboard. One of these was the Antikythera Mechanism and it took over 70 years after it's discovery to figure out what the device was correctly used for. A British physicist and historian of science named Derek de Solla Price worked out that the device was from around 100-150 BC and showed the movement of the sun and moon with great accuracy. Price also mentioned that the differential gear used in the mechanism is "one of the greatest basic mechanical inventions of all time" (Vallianatos, 2012)

A fragment of the mechanism [1]

The next step big step in computing came about many years later. In 1800 a French inventor named Joseph-Marie Jacquard was summoned by Napoleon to help improve the draw loom. The draw loom used perforated card that guided the hooks required for silk weaving. Jacquard helped speed up this process and the Jacquard head was shown to the world in 1804. It is now commonly called the Jacquard Loom. Some people however disagree with this loom being the first computer, as it relied heavily on these punch cards, making it nothing more than an advanced player piano that used the same style of punched roller card to play songs.

Almost 40 years later a British mathematician named Charles Babbage had become obsessed with creating a machine to help him with mathematical tables. His first creation, the Difference Engine could have been built if it wasn't for a number of difficulties, such as late payments from the government and a dispute with his craftsmen. Babbage soon began working on a more advanced machine, the Analytical Engine, and quickly forgot about the Difference Engine. The Analytical Engine used cards in a similar way to Jacquard Loom but could store data on them and also plan out the next set of actions depending on various outcomes. Due to technical limitations of the time Babbage never got to see his machine created, but it was recreated years after by a group at Harvard. (Davis, 2005)

Charles Babbage's Analytical Engine [2]

After this the computers begin looking more like the machines everyone expect and (mostly) run off electricity. In 1939 Hewlett Packard had made their first machine, an audio oscillator. Walt Disney was so impressed he bought 9 for the sound presentation of Fantasia and this was the big order that made them formally go into business together. (Microwave Journal, 2008) The computers around this time were all built for a single purpose, with a single task in mind for a company or government. A good example of this is the Colossus, a machine built to crack the enigma code during the World War 2 or the ENIAC. The ENIAC started its life as a ballistic trajectory table for the US military but was later revised for storing programs, such as monitoring finance or stock. (Neukom, 2006)

The ENIAC [3]

So far we've covered almost 2000 years of computing yet not come across any gaming. This is for a number of reasons. The first reason being that computers of this time were the laughable size of filling multiple rooms, the second being that this was still new technology and even in the 1940's had only scratched the service of what computers can do. Lastly like I mentioned earlier computers were only being built by governments or at a high corporate level, that leaves little room for experimentation. This all began to change when Universities got hold of the computers.

In the 1960's a group of the MIT railway club began taking an interest in computer systems to do with telephones and railways, this lead them to begin experimenting with the computers themselves and the term hacking was coined. These hacks would test a computers capabilities but weren't any use by themselves. (Haddon, 1987) February 1962, Steve Russell, Alan Kotok, J. Martin Graetz and others from the MIT railway club demonstrated a new computer by creating Spacewar! The program had you control a spaceship and you'd have to fire at opponents. The code was shared across the entire MIT campus and it was greatly added to and improved on. The program showcased the new computer perfectly and also showed what the programmers could do with these machines... video gaming was now officially born. (Lowood, 2009)

Spacewar! played on the PDP-1 [4]

At this point the people involved are all from the West, mainly America and Britain. Russia at this time was still deep in communism and in a cold war with the U.S, this made it very difficult to get any information past the iron curtain as Russia tried to make itself independent from the western countries. Japan, now such a major player in the electronics industry, was in the 1960's playing catch up in the 1960's. IBM had just released 3 computers for various roles, the 7070, 7090 and the 1401. The 1401 is one of the most successful computers in the world and Japan recognized this, they had identified that they were at least 10 years behind and wanted to catch up quickly. (Takahashi, Weiss, 1996)

I shall end this post here to try and keep scrolling to a minimum. Part 2 will have more about gaming... I promise!


References & Notes
Evaggelos Vallianatos. (2012). Deciphering and Appeasing the Heavens: The History and Fate of an Ancient Greek Computer. Leonardo. 45 (3), 251-252.

Hans Neukom. (2006). The Second Life of ENIAC.. IEEE Annals of the History of Computing. 28 (13), 4-16.

Henry Lowood. (2009). Videogames in Computer Space: The Complex History of Pong.. IEEE Annals of the History of Computing. 31 (15), 5-19.

Leslie Haddon. (1987). The History of an Interactive Medium. Electronic and Computers Games. 41, 52-73

Martin Davis, Virginia Davis. (2005). Mistaken Ancestry: The Jacquard and the Computer.. Textile: The Journal of Cloth & Culture. 3 (1), 76-87.

Sigeru Takahashi, Eric Weiss. (1996). A brief history of the Japanese computer industry before 1985.. IEEE Annals of the History of Computing.. 18 (4), 76.

Unknown. (2008). HEWLETT-PACKARD COMPANY Palo Alto, California..Microwave Journal. 51 (4), 120-126.

[1] Image sourced from http://www.computus.org/journal/?p=155
[2] Image sourced from http://www.sciencemuseum.org.uk/objects/computing_and_data_processing/1878-3.aspx
[3] Image sourced from http://www.library.upenn.edu/exhibits/rbm/mauchly/jwm8b.html
[4] Image sourced from http://www.wheels.org/spacewar/creative/SpacewarOrigin.html