I finally found the cover letter I got with my SPACEWAR diskette. It contains the complete story of one man's attempt to port the game to every machine he touched, not including his Radio Shack telephone and a Hamilton Beach popcorn popper. Bill Seiler, wherever you are, this is your life! This is only part of the cover letter. I have corrected some typos and no doubt added others. Reprinted without permission. >Dear Sir, > >I have enclosed a disk which contains the soruce files for SPACEWAR. >There is a DOC file on the disk that explains the structure of SPACEWAR. >There are three versions of SPACEWAR. One for the IBM PC with a >standard Color Graphics Card, another version for the IBM PC with a >Hercules Graphics Card, and finally a version for the AT&T compatible >machine. The evolution of SPACEWAR goes back to my days at college. My >first version of SPACEWAR was written on a PDP11/24 with 8K of core >memory, an analog vector scope for display, and variable resistors >connected to A to D converters for input. Later I wrote a version for >my PET computer with a 320 X 200 hi-resolution board installed. The >first 8088 version was written for a VICTOR 9000 in its 800 X 400 >hi-resolution mode. In 1985 I ported the VICTOR 9000 version to the IBM >PC with a HERCULES graphics card since its resolution is 720 X 348 and >close to the VICTOR's resolution. Next I created a version for the >standard IBM color geraphics card in its 640 X 200 mode for everybody >else. The last version created was for an AT&T machine in its 640 X 400 >hi-resolution mode. > > [text elided....] > > Sincerely, > Bill Seiler -- Lindsey Durway, a guy. durway@rtp.dg.com or ..!mcnc!rti!dg-rtp!durway "Perestroika is Big Mac!" -- Manager of the McDonald's in Moscow Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers From: minow@apple.com (Martin Minow) Subject: Re: QUESTION: What was the 1st computer game? In article , dudek@acsu.buffalo.edu (The Cybard=) wrote: > > What was the very first computer game? Illiac-1 (built 1951) had a version of tic-tac-toe in which the computer cheated if you knew the correct sequence. I don't recall seeing any other games on it, however. A friend who worked on SAGE (early warning system) once described a "game" played on its displays in which a dancing lady removed articles of clothing under control of a light-pen. This would have been in the 1959-1960 time-frame. Fortunately, such nonsense stopped once MIT undergraduates started programming computers. Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers From: lasner@watsun.cc.columbia.edu (Charles Lasner) Subject: Re: QUESTION: What was the 1st computer game? In article <1992Nov9.131928.4633@athena.mit.edu> dmsilev@athena.mit.edu (Daniel M Silevitch) writes: >In article , dudek@acsu.buffalo.edu (The Cybard=) writes: >|> What was the very first computer game? When I say computer game, I mean a >|> game that would not exist without the computer. (ex: ZORK, Adventure, >|> Pac-Man, but not computer Tic-Tac-Toe or computer chess.) >|> >I'm pretty sure that the first game written for computers was Spacewar, written >for one of the early PDPs from DEC (PDP-1, -3 ?), a two-player game in which the >goal is to kill the other player without being killed :). Spacewar is still >around, someone wrote a version which runs under X. All of this is likely true on the surface, but to address another topic: You *can't* play *real* spacewar on a video-based interface: Years before there ever were video games, we all wrote/played/whatever visual computer games based on x-y coordinates displayed by D-A convertors on an oscilloscope. Assuming 12-bit DAC's, (a reasonable assumption; the early PDP-8 imitation of the PDP-1 game certainly did) you have a 4096 x 4096 random access display, with no jaggies possible, not even little ones, since the essentially infinite resolution phosphor characteristic smooths out any possible directional movement of the electon beam. The goal of the display portion of the game is to merely go through the entire "list" of things to display at least 25-30 times a second to avoid flicker, and that assumes the phosphor is "short". If you didn't mind the "fading ghost" phenomenom, then you could use a long-phosphor tube (such as is found on a LINC-8) and refresh less often worse-case. (Notice that it isn't necessary to limit the MAX rate of refresh, just the minimum to avoid persistance-of-vision breakdown.) The interface usually consisted of calculating the displayed point into an absolute coordinate space of 4096 x 4096 as an integer, and doing a trivial output instruction to load the DAC, then do the same for the other channel (if necessary. Often, only one co-ordinate is changed while holding the other constant.) Then, in some cases, you load an "intensify" pulse register, often combined with the DAC load instruction. (The PDP-8 AX08 has the following instructions: DXC Clear X register DXL OR AC into X register DINT Intensify DYC Clear Y register DYL OR AC into Y register DINT Intensify The First three or second three were always combinable as a group, so you would often use DXC!DXL and DYC!DYL to load either X or Y as necessary, and if appropriate, either would get !DINT. Thus, if a box is to be drawn, you load the constant coordinate with say DXC!DXL, and then the starting point for the Y coordinate with DYC!DYL!DINT and then increment the AC and loop back. That draws one vertical line through the desired area. Reversing roles makes a horizontal line, etc. Individual points are done with load-Y, then load-X-Int instructions, and again, the roles of X and Y are reversible where required. The three operations are part of one instruction each, and take the same CPU time regardless of how many actual operations are presented (1,2,3). So, if the active portion of a display amounts to 300 points, you need to output DAC changes about 9,000/Second to avoid flicker. Incidentally, watching most 'scope displays in darkness effectively raises the phosphor recovery time, since you lower the average brightness, and raise the "afterglow" effect, so more points before the point of flicker can be tolerated. Also, you can deliberately "refresh" at different rates on purpose. This makes certain objects "twinkle" because they start interfering with the eye's ability to do the P-O-V stuff. This is how the rocket engines are made to have a "flame", etc. and how to display a twinkling sun. The ship outlines and torpedoes are displayed as rapidly as possible to avoid flicker there, unless the ship goes into hyper-space, in which case it is displayed to deliberately and grossly flicker as it fades out. So, how does a video version of any of this do justice to the original features? Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers From: tom_vanvleck@taligent.com (Tom Van Vleck) Subject: Re: QUESTION: What was the 1st computer game? > dudek@acsu.buffalo.edu (The Cybard=) asks > >> What was the very first computer game? When I say computer game, I > >> mean a game that would not exist without the computer. (ex: ZORK, > >> Adventure, Pac-Man, but not computer Tic-Tac-Toe or computer chess.) When I was an MIT freshman in 1961, spacewar was played on TX-0, ("Transistor Experimental 0") in a room on the second floor of building 26. This machine had 48K of 16-bit words and I/O thru flexowriter, tube, & wooden controller boxes with switches on them. I forget if they had joysticks. Spacewar was known to be so addictive that freshmen were advised to avoid it for fear of flunking out. Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers From: wingo@apple.com (Tony Wingo) Subject: Re: QUESTION: What was the 1st computer game? In article <1992Nov10.091841.23601@news.columbia.edu>, lasner@watsun.cc.columbia.edu (Charles Lasner) wrote: > You *can't* play *real* spacewar on a video-based interface: > >[Details of implementing spacewar on a Oscilloscope omitted] > > So, how does a video version of any of this do justice to the original > features? > We did something similar on an IBM 1130 back when I was at Amherst College in the early 70's. It had a vector type CRT disply based on a Tektronix storage tube. If you turned down the holding voltage, the image wouldn't store and you could animate by constantly redrawing the image, as Charles describes. Since the 1130 was not a particularly fast machine (even by the standards of the day), we did all sorts of interesting optimizations: all arithmetic was integer, with trig functions done by table lookup. Since the 1130 lacked a real time clock, we got our timing reference by sending null charcters to the console and using the console interrupt. As I recall the original implementation was done by my roommate, Steve Goff. I did a bunch of the arithmetic algorithms and the timing stuff. After it was working, a fellow named Doug Weber spent several years improving and polishing it. By the time he was done it was really an sophisticated implementation, complete with a sun in the middle, and gravity (that obeyed 1/r^2). The only problem with this implementation was that any time someone wanted to use the tube for real work (god forbid!), the image would disappear as soon as it was drawn, because the previous spacewar players had left the holding voltage off. One other note. Several years after I graduated, I encountered an arcade version of Spacewar that was identical to Doug's 1130 implementation. I always hoped it was something he did rather than someone ripping him off. From: ansok@cco.caltech.edu (Gary Ansok) Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: QUESTION: What was the 1st computer game? In article <1992Nov10.182806.14073@pollux.lu.se> magnus@thep.lu.se (Magnus Olsson) writes: }In article veen2976@mach1.wlu.ca (veenstra christopher) writes: }>Okay, Spacewar is the unanimous winner of that one. Here's a followup then, }>what's the first computer adventure game? } }But _that's_ an easy one, and an FAQ at that: } }Adventure, aka ADVENT, aka Colossal Cave, by Crowther and Woods. What about "Hunt the Wumpus"? Gary Ansok Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers From: jones@pyrite.cs.uiowa.edu (Douglas W. Jones) Subject: Re: QUESTION: What was the 1st computer game? From article <1dph4mINN995@chnews.intel.com>, by smintz@sedona.intel.com (Stephen Mintz exp 11/92~): > > Pong!!! Nope. Pong was the first "mass market" video game. As I understand it, the first implementations didn't use a computer, and it came at least a decade after the first computer games (of which Spacewar is the best known, but there may be obscure others that predate it). Doug Jones jones@cs.uiowa.edu In article , gall@celeste.mmwb.ucsf.edu (Nick Gall) writes: > I'm looking for pointers to references that describe the Original PDP-1? > based Space War at MIT--the more detailed the better. Or how about the > code! Also interested in other video games from the same period--pre Pong. I know of no formal references but... Random PDP-1 Spacewar trivia: Starfield over Boston (With correct magnitudes) from Peter Sampson late of System Concepts. The sources are titled "Stars by PRS" I have a papertape of the binary somewhere It still runs on a PDP-1 at the computer museum in Boston Originally used testword switches (not joysticks), and is probably the source of the FIRST computer related malady... Spacewar Elbow resulting from spending >4 hours resting on your elbows tweeking your four switches with your fingers. (Painful, believe me, you can't straighten out your arms for hours, right /bernie\?) It is possible to play for 30 hours straight (with time out for Cokes only). In the PDP-1 log, you would find names like Marvin Minsky, Pete Sampson, Alan Kotok, (mine: Joe), and "Spacewar" as the operators. Source of proof that spacewar hackers can replace broken switches in the middle of the night with minimal tools in 10% of the time it takes DEC to remove the front panel. Two modes of steering were available, rockets and gyros. had to diddle some location to switch. Most parameters were available in particular locations, examine/deposit to change them. "Firehose missles" was fun, change parameter to allow 20 + missles on screen simultaneously. (These days we would have called this UZI mode.) All done on a DECscope point-at-a-time display with 64 levels of intensity. Oh yes, probably the source of the earliest official memos relating to the prohibition of using computers for playing games. Memory says that the policy of who could bump whom from the system was a list which looked something like this: Professors doing research Professors doing class preparation Graduate students doing research Graduate students doing thesis work [...] Undergraduates doing classwork Undergraduates doing self-assigned projects (aka "hacking") Games Spacewar On the other hand, we got in the first DEC drum in the field, with all of 32 4K word tracks. One of the tracks was immediately allocated to Spacewar. From: jones@pyrite.cs.uiowa.edu (Douglas W. Jones,201H MLH,3193350740,3193382879) Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: how old are computer games ? Date: 3 Feb 1994 16:36:11 GMT From article <16F52D52.JROBERT1@ua1vm.ua.edu>, by JROBERT1@ua1vm.ua.edu (Jeff Robertson): > Everybody knows that Pong, the first arcade game, came out in the 70's. But not everyone seems to know that Pong was not a computer game. The original pong arcade game had nothing analogous to a CPU in it. What it had was single-purpose video-generation hardware. > But when did the concept of game software originate ? Well, Charles Babbage wrote at length on the possibility of building a machine to play tic-tac-toe, and he wrote about the possibility of programming his analytical engine to play chess. I think the first computer game of any kind was a number guessing game, and it was programmed in the very early 1950's. It didn't have anything like an arcade feel to it, though. The first game with the look and feel of an arcade game was almost certainly spacewar, implemented on the PDP-1 at MIT in the very early 1960's. Output was on a scope; at first, as I understand it, players used toggle switches to control their rockets, but it wasn't long before joy-sticks were hooked up and used for that purpose. The basic game involved two rocket ships in orbit around a star. Each had an initial supply of fuel for manuvering, and an initial supply of missiles. The goal was, of course, to destroy your opponent. Spacewar was widely implemented on most machines that had graphic displays and joysticks -- I played it in about 1967 on a DDP 224 (24 bit midicomputer) at the U of Michigan. The timesharing systems of the mid 1960's generated their own slew of games, mostly purely textual and oriented towards teletype input/output. An important class of games initially developed in this environment is now known as Dungenon games. Adventure and Hunt the Wumpus are the oldest of these I know of. (If you have a complete UNIX system, try the /usr/games/adventure for a more modern rewrite of the former). As soon as UNIX was up and running at Bell Labs, games became a major application. All early UNIX distributions from Bell Labs came with directory full of games, and this tradition has been carried on by many commercial distributors of UNIX. See section 6 of the UNIX programmer's manual, but note that as disk space gets scarce, system administrators frequently delete the games. As soon as the folks at U of Cal at Berkeley developed their Termcap and curses package, they began to add arcade style games to the UNIX collection. These are distributed with essentially all BSD UNIX distributions. There were a huge number of multiuser and single user arcade like games developed on the U of Illinois PLATO IV system, starting around 1973. I believe that the first multiuser dungeon game was developed on PLATO by Flint Pellett (flint@kai.com) back around 1976. The original flight simulator game (a multiuser simulator with military jets armed to the teeth) was developed by the U of Illinois Aviation Institute to teach flying skills on PLATO. Empire (a multiuser startrek game) was among the most popular PLATO games in the late 1970's. Doug Jones jones@cs.uiowa.edu From: rbarbaga@cs.uml.edu (Ralph Barbagallo) Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: how old are computer games ? Date: 3 Feb 1994 15:01:34 GMT Pong was not the first arcade game. Nolan Bushnell released (I think he was with Kee Games at the time) Computer Space to the arcade circuit in 1971 which flopped horribly. I've never played it (there are only about 2 working machines on the planet...) it but from what I hear it was simlar to Space War. Also, as far as home systems go, Ralph Baer (the REAL father of home video games...not Nolan) was developing his game system in the late '60s which eventually became Magnavox's Odyssey 1 system back in 1972. (I think he sold it to Magnavox in 1968). So, I'd say Nolan gave birth to the arcade video game industry in 1971 and Ralph Baer gave birth to the programmable video game console industry in '72. Although I may be wrong on the dates. There were tons of stand-alone pong systems on the market but when the 2600 was released and gained popularity a few years later (with the introduction of the Space Invaders cartridge in the late '70's) the dedicated pong/tank battle/roadrace systems eventually lost market dominance. A lot of people assume the Atari 2600 was the first programmable game system out there but the Odyssey 1 and Fairchild were out before. (Although, I think the Fairchild was only released a matter of months before the 2600...I'm not sure) -- Ralph A. Barbagallo III --- rbarbaga@cs.uml.edu --- Only AMIGA makes it Possible... Only C O M M O D O R E stands in the way.... ZzzzzZZZzzzzzzZzzzzzzz.... . From: skybird@satelnet.org (Scott Pallack) Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: how old are computer games ? Date: 3 Feb 1994 07:38:16 -0500 In <16F52D52.JROBERT1@ua1vm.ua.edu> JROBERT1@ua1vm.ua.edu (Jeff Robertson) writes: >Everybody knows that Pong, the first arcade game, came out in the 70's. Everybody must be wrong. Pong was not the first arcade game. It wasn't even the first video arcade game. That honor goes to Computer Space circa 1968-1969. Computer Space pitted your one spaceship against two alien ships. Same movement controls as in Asteroids. It was based on MIT Spacewar for the PDP-1 (?). Scott Pallack skybird@satelnet.org Anyone know where I can find a Digi-Comp I ? Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: how old are computer games ? From: mshapiro@netlink.nix.com (Michael Shapiro) Date: Fri, 04 Feb 94 10:06:20 PST JROBERT1@ua1vm.ua.edu (Jeff Robertson) writes: > Everybody knows that Pong, the first arcade game, came out in the 70's. > But when did the concept of game software originate ? I assume it was before > Pong (I'm not old enought to remember before the late 70's), but I don't > know for sure. Does anybody know about this ? Many minicomputers and time-sharing mainframes had games in the 1960s. I'm sure that others will comment on graphic games, so I'll remark on a couple of text-based games. Probably the best-known of the text-based games was Adventure. You occasionally still see versions around. In the usual mode, it it a cave-exploring game, with various rooms with rewards and hazards throughout. The occasional "twistly little passages" you often see quoted came from that game. I remember using a version written in FORTRAN. One game on which I worked on several implementations was Football. In the common early version, you called a play (from one of seven choices, as I recall) and then the computer showed the results of the play. When it was the computer's turn, it simply showed what it called and the results. I recall doing several versions, each of which seemed to push the limits of program size or complexity on time-sharing systems. While working at Bell Labs, I did a version in Algol for the GE Time-Sharing System and a version in PL/I for the Allen-Babcock Computing (ABC) RUSH system. At Purdue, I did a version in FORTRAN for an early version of PTSS, the Purdue Time-Sharing System. The latter version was interesting in that the system had no interactive capability; you created a batch job, submitted it to background execution, and displayed the results. I managed to build the interactive version by setting up a system that ran a separate job for each play, using the results of one play and the user input selection as data for the next play. More of a toy than a game, ELIZA was perhaps the most famous of the text-based interactive recreations. I collected about a half-dozen versions at one time. My favorite, for its flexibility, was the one written in SNOBOL4. -- INTERNET: mshapiro@netlink.nix.com (Michael Shapiro) UUCP: ...!ryptyde!netlink!mshapiro Network Information eXchange * Public Access in San Diego, CA (619) 453-1115 From: robinson@kla.com (Michael Robinson x6844) Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: how old are computer games ? Date: Sat, 5 Feb 1994 00:48:07 GMT Jeff Robertson (JROBERT1@ua1vm.ua.edu) wrote: : Everybody knows that Pong, the first arcade game, came out in the 70's. : But when did the concept of game software originate ? I assume it was before : Pong (I'm not old enought to remember before the late 70's), but I don't : know for sure. Does anybody know about this ? : I remember reading that when the Illiac I came up, there wasn't too much software written for it. They had to come up with something for it to do since newspaper reporters were wanting to write about the amazing "electronic brain" (as they said in those days). Of course they got a program to search for the largest prime number running to satisfy the techie types, but for a more "human-interest" angle they also came up with a program that played checkers. Of course, nowadays the reaction would be "how many millions of taxpayer dollars did you spend on a machine to play checkers?". But in those far-off days the idea was checkers this year, chess next year, and after that, with an additional 12000 vacuum tubes we can start to translate Russian documents. What a pity the vodka was good but the meat was rotten! Without any reference materials available here I couldn't give you an exact date for when the Illiac I came up, but it was the late 1940s or early 1950s. So computer games go back to the earliest days of computers. On a related note, the Illiac I or II was the first computer ever used to compose music--the "Illiac Suite". Lejaren Hiller, the person who was in charge of the project, died recently. I met him once--he was a very cool guy. It's too bad he's not around any more. Michael Robinson From: jolomo@netcom.com (Joe Morris) Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: how old are computer games ? Date: Sun, 6 Feb 1994 00:30:53 GMT Oops, my news reader barfed a minute ago. Ralph Barbagallo (rbarbaga@cs.uml.edu) wrote: > Yeah, I never saw the Studio II but I am still searching for one. > They seem very hard to track down. Was it a pong unit type deal, or > did it actually accept cartridges (I've heard both...) Hmmm, well sense you asked, I dug out the Studio II Owners Manual. And since it IS a "Home TV Programmer" :), I guess it's appropriate for this group. The machine was around a foot wide with telephone style keypads on each end. In the middle was the slot for cartridges, a power light and a reset key. You played builtin games by hitting a number on the left keypad the cartidges booted on reset or power-on. ---------------------------------- RCA Studio II brings tomorrow's world of home video entertainment to you today. With the Studio II, you transform the TV set in your home into an electronic entertainment and educational center for the entire family. The heart of the RCA Studio II is a 100% solid-state micro-miniature computer called COSMAC. It is smaller than a fingernail and contains over 6,000 transistors. Other solid-state devices provide over 20,000 bits of memory which are used to store programs. Five different built-in creative, educational and action programs are included with the Studio II. Additional programs are available in plug-in type cartridges. ----------------------------------1976 The builtins: (with number to start it) 1 Doodle -- drawing program 2 Patterns -- automated kaleidoscope 3 Bowling -- make your square hit the boxes 4 Freeway -- Top view of a 2-minute race, points for passing and speed. Causing accidents doesn't gain you points, it slows you down. 5 Addition -- Three digit addition (this must be the educational part) The only cartridge I had was baseball, they mention "Space War -- two exciting \"shoot 'em down\" games", "Fun with Numbers -- puzzles that test your sharpness" and "TV School House Series" Joe "Extra points for mentioning solid-state twice" Morris -- -joe "Honey, they're in *everybody's* eggs" --firesigns From: jcmorris@mwunix.mitre.org (Joe Morris) Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: how old are computer games ? Date: 5 Feb 94 19:52:28 GMT jitze@svl.cdc.com (Jitze Couperus) writes: >Depends on your definition of "game". One of my first training exercises >on a tube computer in the mid-60's sometime was to implement the game "Nim" > [...] I recall from some time in the early/mid 1950s going to the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago; at the Bell System (remember it?) exhibit, one of the things that facinated me was a lashup of relays which would play Tic-Tac-Toe. Input was a standard WECO dial; the output was a rear-lit display of the 9 squares of the game board. I think it was implemented using singleton telephone relays, although I have a vague recollection of seeing a crossbar frame there. In either case it meets the fundamental definition of a "computer game." Joe Morris / MITRE From: alderson@netcom.com (Richard M. Alderson III) Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: how old are computer games ? Date: Fri, 4 Feb 1994 01:03:14 GMT In article <16F52D52.JROBERT1@ua1vm.ua.edu> JROBERT1@ua1vm.ua.edu (Jeff Robertson) writes: >Everybody knows that Pong, the first arcade game, came out in the 70's. >But when did the concept of game software originate ? I assume it was before >Pong (I'm not old enought to remember before the late 70's), but I don't >know for sure. Does anybody know about this ? Depends on what kind of game software you mean. Space War, the first arcade- style game, came out on the PDP-1 in the early 60s; there was at least one chess program even earlier (written in IPL V [I'm sure] on some Univac system [I think]); and the text adventure and Star Trek simulations came along in the late 60s. -- Rich Alderson You know the sort of thing that you can find in any dictionary of a strange language, and which so excites the amateur philo- logists, itching to derive one tongue from another that they know better: a word that is nearly the same in form and meaning as the corresponding word in English, or Latin, or Hebrew, or what not. --J. R. R. Tolkien, alderson@netcom.com _The Notion Club Papers_ From: jcmorris@mwunix.mitre.org (Joe Morris) Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: how old are computer games ? Date: 6 Feb 94 03:05:33 GMT robinson@kla.com (Michael Robinson x6844) writes: >On a related note, the Illiac I or II was the first computer ever >used to compose music--the "Illiac Suite". Lejaren Hiller, the >person who was in charge of the project, died recently. I met >him once--he was a very cool guy. It's too bad he's not around >any more. I can't say if the system was Illiac I or II, but the following text might be of interest. It's taken from the liner which accompanied a 10" LP record published by Bell Labs in 1961 under the title "Music from Mathematics": In addition to "playing" music it is also possible for a computer to "compose" music. On Side Two of this record is presented an excerpt from a series of unusual experiments conducted at the University of Illinois by Lejaren A. Hiller, Jr. and Leonard M. Issacson. They successfully programmed the Illiac computer to compose music according to various rules of musical composition which were stored in the computer. The computer produced sequences of letters and numbers which were then transcribed by hand into conventional musical notation suitable for playing by human musicians. This two-minute excerpt from the 20-minute _Illiac Suite for String Quartet_ is played by the WQXR String Quartet (Harry Glickman and Hugo Fiorato, violins; Jack Braunstein, viola; and Harvey Shapiro, cello). A more detailed description of _The Illiac Suite_ is presented in the album notes. Excerpts from the enclosed notes, starting on page 7: THE COMPUTER AS COMPOSER [...] In order to investigate this idea [computer-composed music] L. M. Issacson and L. A. Hiller, Jr., in 1955, conducted a series of experiments of composing music with _Illiac_, the high-speed digital computer at the University of Illinois. They completed four groups of experiments and published samples of them in _The Illiac Suite for String Quartet_. THE ILLIAC SUITE FOR STRING QUARTET To set a digital computer to composing simple melodies, Hiller and Issacson assigned numbers in sequences to the notes of the music scale from low C upwards. At first only white notes were used, with sharps and flats omitted; but in later experiments a chromatic scale of about two and a half octaves was used. Then the computer was set to generating sequences of random numbers. These can be interpreted as equivalent to random music. [a couple of pages of descriptions of the four movements and the sequence filters which were applied to produce the computer-written music] Musicians who have played computer compositions have complained that the score is often too difficult for human fingers and conventional musical instruments to perform well. That may well be. Perhaps in the future computers will compose "easier" scores; or, what is more likely, they may circumvent human musicians and conventional instruments entirely, and play the music themselves. In fact, several computers have been "practicing" for several months, and alrady they are becoming versatile musical instruments. --- For context, the disk shows a copyright date of 1960 and the enclosed booklet (from which the above was taken) shows a 1961 copyright. Joe Morris / MITRE From: mbridson@morgan.ucs.mun.ca (Mary Bridson) Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: how old are computer games ? Date: 6 Feb 94 19:27:01 GMT JROBERT1@ua1vm.ua.edu (Jeff Robertson) writes: >Everybody knows that Pong, the first arcade game, came out in the 70's. As far as I know, the first arcade game was created in 1958, by Willy Higinbotham at the Dept. of Nuclear Energy in the US. He wanted to make tours of the lab a bit more exciting, and so he made an analog computer with two paddles and an oscilloscope display that let two players play a sort of two-dimensional tennis (you got a side-view of the court). To be more precise, the blueprints were made Oct. 1958, a date which has been verified. (source: _Creative_Computing_ October 1982, p. 190) -- Robert Bridson (using mbridson's account) I'm interested for some reason in stories about the development of computer games. Having never seen a computer until the early 80's, I would really like to hear any stories from old(er)-timers about when, where, and how some of the "classic" games such as hack, adventure, and trek came to be. In the beginning of the 60's there were an IBM 709. Main memory was on a drum. It had a display valve(?) for some bits - may be 12 or 16 or 24? someone had written a programm which made the bits lightening from the left to right and from the right to the left and so on. The task for the user was to hit a key when the indicator in the middle of the horizopntally arranged bitdisplay was enlightened. In a way I do not remember the computer could tell how far away the user was from the middle. When I visited the computer museum in Boston two years ago they had an OLD PDP-1 that was still running. The machine must have been produced somewhere in 1961 or 1962. This PDP-1 it was displaying the STAR WARS game, which pre-dates Star Trek on TV by a few years. Moreover, I understood that the PDP-1 itself was not running, but was being faked from a Macintosh or something. From: verhoef@europa.eng.gtefsd.com (Ed Ver Hoef) Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: A Cheating Computer From 1957 to 1960 I worked for Commonwealth Edison Co., the electric utility in the Chicago area, doing scientific and operations research programming. The company had an IBM 705 computer used for billing. (I heard that it was the first one delivered by IBM but I don't know that for certain.) Each spring, the copmany held an open house as part of a public relations operation. Each department was urged to prepare some sort of presentation about what that department does. Even though computers were pretty rare in those days, a billing operation is not terribly thrilling to watch - tapes spin and bills are printed. Therefore, one of the programmers in that department programmed the 705 to play a game which I believe is called Nim. On the operator's terminal, it would print an invitation to someone to play the game and announce that the number was 13 and the user was to take away either 1 or 2. Assume the player took 2. The computer then would print "The number was 13. You took 2. 13 - 2 = 11. I choose 2. 11 - 2 = 9. Your turn." The object was to be the one to reduce the number to zero. Inevitably it would end up with the number going to the player being 3. He would choose (say) 2 and the computer would print "The number was 3. You took 2. 3 - 2 = 1. I choose. 11 - 1 = . I win! Next player please." In one of the tours, one of the members of the audience knew that there was a winning algorithm if you could force the other player to go first. (The programmer had known that. In fact, the algorithm was built into the program.) He said he could beat the computer if it would go first. The programmer (who was running the demo) said the program wasn't written to allow that but they could try to fake it by choosing 0 as the first move. They tried it. The computer responded with "The number was 13. You took 0. 13 - 0 = 10. I choose 2. 13 - 2 = 11. Your turn." It eventually was 4 goin to the player who chose 1. The computer responded with "The number was 4. You took 1. 4 - 1 = . I choose 2. 3 - 2 = 0. I win! Next player please." A billing computer that cheats is not a great public relations ploy. From: skybird@satelnet.org (Scott Pallack) Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: First computer game ever written? Date: 16 Aug 1994 12:38:55 -0400 In <32phpq$4d@panix.com> dannyb@panix.com (danny burstein) writes: >In <32okj7$g1e@vixen.cso.uiuc.edu> roth@ux4.cso.uiuc.edu (Roth Mark Daniel) writes: >>pjnagel@dos-lan.cs.up.ac.za (Platinum Puma the III) writes: >>>Does anyone out here no what the first computer game was? What computer did >>>it run on? Who wrote it? What was the input - a punched-tape interface to a >>>Hangman game? >how about the "animal" game? I played it on an ibm mainframe in the >musuem of natural history (NYC) in circa 1968... Well, Samuel's checker player dates back to the mid-50's. I will lay 2 to 1 odds that the first computer game was tic-tac-toe. (naughts and crosses to those on the wrong side of the Atlantic.) -- INTPs of the world UNITE! Join the INTP mailing list. To subscribe email listserv@satelnet.org with body: SUBSCRIBE INTP (subject: ignored) If you don't know what INTP means, finger skybird@satelnet.org Scott Pallack skybird@satelnet.org Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers From: alderson@netcom.com (Richard M. Alderson III) Subject: Re: First computer game ever written? Date: Tue, 16 Aug 1994 18:45:43 GMT In article pjnagel@dos-lan.cs.up.ac.za (Platinum Puma the III) writes: >Does anyone out here no what the first computer game was? What computer did >it run on? Who wrote it? What was the input - a punched-tape interface to a >Hangman game? I'm not sure, but I think it was the checkers program written in IPL V (by Herb Simon? and a second person whose name I can't even guess at). I think the hardware was an early Univac. This was in the 1956-1957 timeframe; certainly, it was already working by the time of the first Artificial Intelligence conference, convened in 1959 by John McCarthy. -- Rich Alderson You know the sort of thing that you can find in any dictionary of a strange language, and which so excites the amateur philo- logists, itching to derive one tongue from another that they know better: a word that is nearly the same in form and meaning as the corresponding word in English, or Latin, or Hebrew, or what not. --J. R. R. Tolkien, alderson@netcom.com _The Notion Club Papers_ From: tex@rmcs.cranfield.ac.uk (Brian {Hamilton Kelly}) Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: First computer game ever written? Date: 17 Aug 94 13:28:18 +0100 In article , pjnagel@dos-lan.cs.up.ac.za (Platinum Puma the III) writes: > Does anyone out here no what the first computer game was? What computer did > it run on? Who wrote it? What was the input - a punched-tape interface to a > Hangman game? Can't tell you what the game was, how one played, or whatever: however, I _do_ recall (vaguely) hearing about some `recreational' program that used the Williams storage tubes of the original Manchester University Mk. I machine --- that would be late 1940s. For those computer-historically challenged, the Williams storage tube was a purely electronic method of storing ones and zeros in those far off days; a special cathode ray tube could have the beam deflected to umpteen individually addressable locations (arranged in a square matrix; 32x32 sounds feasible), and write a spot (or not). By later passing a lower-strength beam over the spots, it was possible to detect whether there had been a one or a zero at each point. Fast, of course, compared with the alternatives, which were magnetostrictive or mercury delay lines or core storage. And NO, it's not part of the Legend of Mel: such devices really existed, and worked (well). Somewhere or other, I've got a photo of a Williams storage tube in use; I could scan and post it, if anyone is interested? -- Brian {Hamilton Kelly} +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+ + JANET: tex@rmcs.cran.ac.uk + + UUCP: {mcsun,uknet,uunet}!rmcs.cran.ac.uk!tex + + Smail: School of Electrical Engineering & Science, Royal Military + + College of Science, Shrivenham, SWINDON SN6 8LA, U.K. + + Phone: Swindon (0793) 785252 (UK), +44-793-785252 (International) + +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+ From: jcmorris@mwunix.mitre.org (Joe Morris) Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: First computer game ever written? Date: 17 Aug 94 16:21:47 GMT tex@rmcs.cranfield.ac.uk (Brian {Hamilton Kelly}) writes: >For those computer-historically challenged, the Williams storage tube was a >purely electronic method of storing ones and zeros in those far off days; a >special cathode ray tube could have the beam deflected to umpteen >individually addressable locations (arranged in a square matrix; 32x32 >sounds feasible), and write a spot (or not). By later passing a >lower-strength beam over the spots, it was possible to detect whether there >had been a one or a zero at each point. Fast, of course, compared with the >alternatives, which were magnetostrictive or mercury delay lines or core >storage. And NO, it's not part of the Legend of Mel: such devices really >existed, and worked (well). The Williams tubes had (even in those days) a glaring (sorry) problem: programmers were in the habit of using certain addresses far more frequently than others, and the electronic wear and tear on the storage face points corresponding to those addresses tended to develop burns. One of Herb Grosch's stories of his days at IBM recounted an event at one of the labs: one night the engineers came in and scrambled the address assignment lines to distribute the high-use points across the tube face. According to Herb the facility manager threw a fit when he found out about this because it invalidated one of the programs there: the one the shop ran whenever the Big Boss arrived, that spelled out on the Williams tubes the message "Good morning, Mr. Watson." No, I wasn't there to see this, but Herb swore it's true. Joe Morris / MITRE (BTW: is Herb still around? I haven't seen anything of him for a long time.) From: gayford@decus.org.au Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: First computer game ever written? Date: 18 Aug 94 09:55:38 AEST In article <32phpq$4d@panix.com>, dannyb@panix.com (danny burstein) writes: > In <32okj7$g1e@vixen.cso.uiuc.edu> roth@ux4.cso.uiuc.edu (Roth Mark Daniel) writes: > >>pjnagel@dos-lan.cs.up.ac.za (Platinum Puma the III) writes: > >>>Does anyone out here no what the first computer game was? What computer did >>>it run on? Who wrote it? What was the input - a punched-tape interface to a >>>Hangman game? > > how about the "animal" game? I played it on an ibm mainframe in the > musuem of natural history (NYC) in circa 1968... > -- > ---------------------------------- > Knowledge may be power, but communications is the key > -dannyb@panix.com (or dburstein@mcimail.com) The first computer game I played was Nim. Originally a match game, where opponents had two groups of matches and the objective was to leave the loser with one match. It was computerised as there was a mathematical basis for winning or drawing, and the computer always won. When I reconstructed the method used, I used my new found knowledge to gain many many beers. The computer was a HEC 4 Hollerith, a vac tube model of great proportions, later called the 1201. The time was 1956. Tom Gayford