The Earliest Documented Video Game

AsiNisiMasa writes "The first documented video game was created in 1952 by a scientist who felt the need to give his work relevance to society. It was called 'Tennis for Two' and took up about as much room as one would expect. The article at Brookhaven History comes complete with several pictures and even video: 'A two-dimensional, side view of a tennis court was displayed on an oscilloscope, which has a cathode-ray tube similar to a black and white TV tube. In order to generate the court and net lines and the ball, it was necessary to time-share these functions. While the rest of the system used vacuum tubes and relays, the time-sharing circuit and the fast switches used transistors, which by 1958 were coming into use.'"

Comments

Re:very cool

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually they don't from what I've gathered, the dial only says what angle to shoot the ball, you can hit it anytime it's on your court. If the other players hits it right next to the net, and you don't have the reflexes to save it, they score. On the contrary, if the player hits it far back, with not a high enough angle, it will hit the net and the other player scores.

Much much more complex than pong. But then again even in normal video game terms, pong wasn't first. I believe Spacewar was, though I'm not sure how complex that game was.

Up, Down, A, B, A, B, Start

[Somatic]

Thus, the first video came combo move was 30 degrees left, 60 degrees right, TheOnlyButton, TheOnlyButton, RESET

(and yeah, it may not be new news, but lighten up. At this point, anything besides another 360, PSP or Hot Coffee lawsuit story is a breath of fresh air).