Video Games: The Origins.

The first computer game was not officially recognised until 1948 and that is not too long ago. Computers though, they had been known since the 19th century. The difference engine (1849) created by Charles Babbage was an automatic mechanical calculator designed to tabulate polynomial functions.

The biggest jump towards computing happened during the second World War. The urge to engineer new weapons and machines to break the enemy's comunications coding made a huge impact on the developing process of computers.

The size of computers post WWII was huge, they would occupy a whole room! At this point though, only big business and the military would use computers.

Then in 1948 using an army computer that tracked the trajectories of mssiles, William Higinbotham came up with Tennis for two, the predecessor of Pong.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6PG2mdU_i8k   (Tennis for two short video)

From this point onwards computers started their first revolution. Smaller personal computers started appearing on the market as entertainment devices. Arcade gaming took over in 1960s. Big computers were still used by business but from this point, computing wasn't limited to creating and solving codes but as an artístic tool as well.
In 1973, 77 Xenox park in California created the first form of digital painting software which they called 'Superpaint'.

In 1976 Apple would launch the Apple I and computer games would change course. The 70s marked the beginning of the end for Arcade games and the very beginning of gaming consoles!

(Atari vcs)

Next update: History of computer games part II.



References frm Wikipedia and google images.