BSA106-Video Game History

Computer/IT History

1679

Gottfried Leibniz, a German mathematician, invents the language of computers (Binary, it uses 0 and 1)

1770

"The Turk" was a chess machine built by Wolfgang von Kemplen, A mechnanical figure would make a move of its own, but there was actually just a human inside the box pulling the levers.
Johann Maezael bought the machine in 1804 and toured Europe and America with it. It was later destroyed by fire in 1854.

1804

Jospeh Jacquard built on the idea of Binary code. He created an automated steam-powered weaving loom that was guided by punched holes in cardboard. This is pretty cool, since it was like the beginning of computers.

1821

Charles Babbage, a computer pioneer designed two classes of engine: Difference Engines (Strictly calculators) and Analytical Engines (A step up and for general-purpose computation) They were never built, but did spark inspiration.

1843

Ada Lovelace created the first published computer algorithm.

1890

US census clerk, Herman Hollerith adapts Jacquard and Babbage's punch cards, adding the new technology to electricity.

1914-1920

Leonardo Torres y Quevedo constructs an actual chess playing game.

1923

Arthur Scherbius creates the enigma

1940

Edward U. Condon designs a computer for Westinghouse display at World's Fair. It played Nim, in which players avoid picking up the last matchstick.

1947

Thomas T. Goldsmith Jr and Estle Ray Mann, file a patent for a "Cathose ray tube amusement device"

1948

Engineers at Manchester University found a way to store memory using electrical charges instead of paper tape.

1950

Claude Shannon lays out the basic guidelines for programming a chess-playing computer in an article for Philosophical Magazine "Programming a Computer for Playing Chess"

Alan Turing, created the Turing test. This test is used in the video game Detroit: Become Human

1951

"Baby" became the first prototype for the general-purpose electronic computer to be sold commercially (The Ferranti Mark 1)

1952

A S. Douglass creates OXO

1954

Programmers develop the first blackjack program on an IBM 701 Computer

1955

Us Military designs a war game pretty much

Hack meant to be more creative than what's outlined in the instruction manual
It later became synonymous with digital trespasser.

1956

Arthur Samuel demonstrates his computer checkers programme

1957

Alex Bernstein writes the first-computer chess program on an IMB-704 Computer.

1958

Higinbotham creates tennis for two.

1959

Students at MIT Create Mouse in the Maze on MIT's TX-0 Computer.

1960

John Burgeson skives of work to create a game and then employees his brother and creates the first-known baseball computer game.

1961

Raytheon develops a computer simulation of global cold war conflict for US joint chiefs of staff. It was to difficult for them to use.

1961

Three Massachusettes Institute of Technology creates Spacewar! on the unusually small PDP-1 (Size of two small fridges)

1963

Computer game creates STAGE (Simulation of Total Atomic Global Exchange)

1964

John Kemeny and Keith Bellairs create computer time-share system and BASIC Programming Language.

1965

Dartmouth Student Programs first computer football game.

1966

Ralph Baer, wanted to change TV from one-way box to interactive.

1967

Baer patent "The brown box" (First console)
Odyssey was created by Magnavox.

1970

Scientific American publishes the rules for LIFE in Martin Gardner's "Mathematical Games" Column. In this simulation, isolates or overcrowded  die while others live an reproduce.

1971

Minnesota Collage students, Don Rawitsche, Bill Heinemann and Phil Dillenbeger create Oregon Trail. Which was a simulation of pioneers westward Trek