For my Senior Project I decided to do one on the History of videogames from the Early days of Pong all the way to the modern games and into the Future. For my Physical Projcet I decide to do a timeline on the events for the History of videogames. I decide to post my timeline here to show you what I have worked on so far. Feel free to comment and reply on what I need to improve on.
1947:
· The Cathrode ray tube amusement device is the first electronic videogame to be made.
It was invented by Tomas T. Goldsmith Jr. and Estle Ray Mann. The game has a simple concept, all that the game was a radar screen and a person controlling two knobs to knock out the other aircraft.
1949:
· Charley Adama created a bouncing ball program for the whirlwind program at MIT. It is not interactive but it is a step in the right direction
1951:
· Christopher Strachey tried to run a draughts program for the NPL pilot Ace and it had great memory capacity but it exceeded the capacity of the machine.
· Also, Ralph Baer thought up the idea while trying to improve TV technology thought of using lights and patterns for more than just calibration equipment. He realized that people who had manipulated what was on their television set from passive observing to interactive manipulation. He proposed this idea to his supervisor but was denied because their company was already behind schedule.
1958:
· William Higinbotham using a oscilloscope and a analog computer created Tennis for Two. The game showed what look like a tennis court and showed two dots and a ball. The game plays like tennis and its concepts are a lot like pong.
1959:
· Interactive graphical programs at MIT created several games such as Tic Tac Toe, HAX, Mouse and Maze. Mouse and Maze is a game where people set up a maze and a bunch of cheese and the other player is a mouse and one is trying to collect the pieces of cheese while exiting the maze. HAX is just a bunch of graphical displays and sounds. Tic Tac Toe: is based off of the board game but used on a computer with a light pen. Two players can play Tic Tac Toe.
1961:
· Steve Russell invented the game of Spacewar! Or Computer Space, the game was of two human players shooting missiles at the other player’s space ship while trying to avoid the sun in the middle.
1966:
· Ralph Baer and Bill Harrison while working at military electronics at Sanders Associates created a simple videogame called chase. It is one of the first videogames to be displayed on a standard television set.
· Bill Harrison created the light gun for the project. Several other games were invented by Bill Harrison and Ralph Baer and by the end of 1969 Sanders was showing off the first home videogame console.
1969:
· Ken Tompson invented a videogame called Space Travel where one person controlled a ship and there were other planets in the solar system and one person tried to land on them. It never was sold because AT&T pulled out of the project.
1971:
· Galaxy game based off of space war was installed at student union at Stanford University. Only one of these machines was built but in 1972 it was expanded to handle up to four to eight players.
1971:
· Nolan Bushnell created the first coin operated Spacewar game Nutting Associates bought the game and created 1500 Computer Space arcade machines and was sold in November. It was unsuccessful because of its steep learning curve.
1972:
· Bushnell and Dabny founded Atari, inc. Pong was released later that year based off of Tennis for two. Pong sold over 19000 Pong Machines spawning many imitators.
1972:
· The Magnavox Odyssey was the first Pong console to be released. The Odyssey uses special cartages for its games. Overlays and sheets were also available for the games which allowed the player to play certain games.
· Frank Sinatra did a TV ad for the Magnavox odyssey selling over 100000 copies of the console its first year. Philips Company bought it in 1974 and sent it to Europe and it sold over 2 million units in its lifespan.
1974:
· Maze War was played on the PLATO system and was one of the first multiplayer games to be invented.
· In this year Brad Fortner invented Aircraft to be the first educational flight simulator but it had mediocre graphics and terrible loading times. It was released on the PLATO and became instantly popular.
1975:
· William Crowther invented the first text adventure game called: Adventure. It was for the PDP-10. It was a simple game of players writing simple texts and receiving responses for the player’s actions. The game was recreated on the PLATO system.
· Also, in 1975 Daglow wrote the first Roleplaying game called: Dungeons. It was based off of Dungeons and Dragons and mostly text. It displayed line and sight graphics and it was a top down perspective.
1976:
· Telengard was another DND inspired computer game to be made for a videogame.
1977:
· Kelton Flin and John Taylor created Air to be a text combat aerial warfare game. It was extremely primitive and it also had multiplayer graphics available.
· In 1977 the original Zork was moved onto the home videogame console. A videogame crash of 1977 also occurred and was caused by many Pong Consoles that flooded the market.
· The Atari 2600 released this year.
1980:
· The Intellivision was released in this year by Mattel. It was sold rather successfully and was a major threat to Atari’s dominance of the videogame market.
· The Atari has most of the rights to its videogames. But the Atari still sold more units than the Intellivision .
1982:
· Many new consoles came out this year such as the: Vectrec, Calicovision, Arcadia 2001, and the Atari 5200.
· The Vetrec was unique featuring graphics and its own built in controller. Space Invader was also released as well as Nintendo’s Donkey Kong. The absolute worst game to ever be made E.T. The Extra Terrestrial was release
The History of Videogames A TL
1947-1982
1947:
· The Cathrode ray tube amusement device is the first electronic videogame to be made.
It was invented by Tomas T. Goldsmith Jr. and Estle Ray Mann. The game has a simple concept, all that the game was a radar screen and a person controlling two knobs to knock out the other aircraft.
1949:
· Charley Adama created a bouncing ball program for the whirlwind program at MIT. It is not interactive but it is a step in the right direction
1951:
· Christopher Strachey tried to run a draughts program for the NPL pilot Ace and it had great memory capacity but it exceeded the capacity of the machine.
· Also, Ralph Baer thought up the idea while trying to improve TV technology thought of using lights and patterns for more than just calibration equipment. He realized that people who had manipulated what was on their television set from passive observing to interactive manipulation. He proposed this idea to his supervisor but was denied because their company was already behind schedule.
1958:
· William Higinbotham using a oscilloscope and a analog computer created Tennis for Two. The game showed what look like a tennis court and showed two dots and a ball. The game plays like tennis and its concepts are a lot like pong.
1959:
· Interactive graphical programs at MIT created several games such as Tic Tac Toe, HAX, Mouse and Maze. Mouse and Maze is a game where people set up a maze and a bunch of cheese and the other player is a mouse and one is trying to collect the pieces of cheese while exiting the maze. HAX is just a bunch of graphical displays and sounds. Tic Tac Toe: is based off of the board game but used on a computer with a light pen. Two players can play Tic Tac Toe.
1961:
· Steve Russell invented the game of Spacewar! Or Computer Space, the game was of two human players shooting missiles at the other player’s space ship while trying to avoid the sun in the middle.
1966:
· Ralph Baer and Bill Harrison while working at military electronics at Sanders Associates created a simple videogame called chase. It is one of the first videogames to be displayed on a standard television set.
· Bill Harrison created the light gun for the project. Several other games were invented by Bill Harrison and Ralph Baer and by the end of 1969 Sanders was showing off the first home videogame console.
1969:
· Ken Tompson invented a videogame called Space Travel where one person controlled a ship and there were other planets in the solar system and one person tried to land on them. It never was sold because AT&T pulled out of the project.
1971:
· Galaxy game based off of space war was installed at student union at Stanford University. Only one of these machines was built but in 1972 it was expanded to handle up to four to eight players.
1971:
· Nolan Bushnell created the first coin operated Spacewar game Nutting Associates bought the game and created 1500 Computer Space arcade machines and was sold in November. It was unsuccessful because of its steep learning curve.
1972:
· Bushnell and Dabny founded Atari, inc. Pong was released later that year based off of Tennis for two. Pong sold over 19000 Pong Machines spawning many imitators.
1972:
· The Magnavox Odyssey was the first Pong console to be released. The Odyssey uses special cartages for its games. Overlays and sheets were also available for the games which allowed the player to play certain games.
· Frank Sinatra did a TV ad for the Magnavox odyssey selling over 100000 copies of the console its first year. Philips Company bought it in 1974 and sent it to Europe and it sold over 2 million units in its lifespan.
1974:
· Maze War was played on the PLATO system and was one of the first multiplayer games to be invented.
· In this year Brad Fortner invented Aircraft to be the first educational flight simulator but it had mediocre graphics and terrible loading times. It was released on the PLATO and became instantly popular.
1975:
· William Crowther invented the first text adventure game called: Adventure. It was for the PDP-10. It was a simple game of players writing simple texts and receiving responses for the player’s actions. The game was recreated on the PLATO system.
· Also, in 1975 Daglow wrote the first Roleplaying game called: Dungeons. It was based off of Dungeons and Dragons and mostly text. It displayed line and sight graphics and it was a top down perspective.
1976:
· Telengard was another DND inspired computer game to be made for a videogame.
1977:
· Kelton Flin and John Taylor created Air to be a text combat aerial warfare game. It was extremely primitive and it also had multiplayer graphics available.
· In 1977 the original Zork was moved onto the home videogame console. A videogame crash of 1977 also occurred and was caused by many Pong Consoles that flooded the market.
· The Atari 2600 released this year.
1980:
· The Intellivision was released in this year by Mattel. It was sold rather successfully and was a major threat to Atari’s dominance of the videogame market.
· The Atari has most of the rights to its videogames. But the Atari still sold more units than the Intellivision .
1982:
· Many new consoles came out this year such as the: Vectrec, Calicovision, Arcadia 2001, and the Atari 5200.
· The Vetrec was unique featuring graphics and its own built in controller. Space Invader was also released as well as Nintendo’s Donkey Kong. The absolute worst game to ever be made E.T. The Extra Terrestrial was release