History of Video Games - The First Video Game Ever Made?
As a devoted retro-gamer, for quite a long time I've been particularly thinking about the history of video gaming. To be more specific, a subject that I'm very passionate about is "That was the first gaming available?"... So, I started an exhaustive investigation on this subject (and making this article the first one in a series of articles that will cover in detail all video gaming history).
The question was: That was the first gaming ever made?
The answer: Well, as lots of things in life, there is absolutely no easy answer to that question. This will depend by yourself definition of the word "gaming". For instance: When you discuss "the first gaming", can you mean the first video game that was commercially-made, or the initial console game, or maybe the initial digitally programmed game? Because of this, I made a listing of 4-5 video games that in one way or another were the beginners of the video gaming industry. You will notice that the first video gaming were not created with the idea of getting any benefit from them (back in those decades there is no Nintendo, Sony, Microsoft, Sega, Atari, or any gaming company around). In fact, the sole notion of a "gaming" or an electric device that was only made for "doing offers and having a great time" was above the imagination of over 99% of the populace back in days past. But thanks to this small band of geniuses who walked the initial steps into the video gaming revolution, we are able to enjoy many hours of fun and entertainment today (keeping aside the creation of millions of jobs in the past four or five 5 decades). Without further ado, here I present the "first video game nominees":
1940s: Cathode Ray Tube Amusement Device
That is considered (with official documentation) because the first electronic game device ever made. It was developed by Thomas T. Goldsmith Jr. and Estle Ray Mann. The game was assembled in the 1940s and submitted for an US Patent in January 1947. lido88 was granted December 1948, which also helps it be the first electronic game device to ever get a patent (US Patent 2,455,992). As described in the patent, it had been an analog circuit device having an selection of knobs used to move a dot that appeared in the cathode ray tube display. This game was inspired by how missiles appeared in WWII radars, and the object of the overall game was simply controlling a "missile" so as to hit a target. In the 1940s it had been extremely difficult (for not saying impossible) to show graphics in a Cathode Ray Tube display. For lido88 , only the specific "missile" appeared on the display. The target and any graphics were showed on screen overlays manually placed on the display screen. It has been said by many that Atari's famous video game "Missile Command" was created after this gaming device.
1951: NIMROD
NIMROD was the name of a digital computer device from the 50s decade. The creators of this computer were the engineers of an UK-based company under the name Ferranti, with the idea of displaying these devices at the 1951 Festival of Britain (and later it had been also showed in Berlin).
NIM is really a two-player numerical game of strategy, that is thought to come originally from the ancient China. The guidelines of NIM are easy: There are always a certain amount of groups (or "heaps"), and each group includes a certain amount of objects (a standard starting selection of NIM is 3 heaps containing 3, 4, and 5 objects respectively). Each player take turns removing objects from the heaps, but all removed objects should be from the single heap and a minumum of one object is removed. The ball player to take the final object from the last heap loses, however there is a variation of the game where the player to take the final object of the final heap wins.