As is frequently the case during the holiday season, I got caught up in a heated debate with my stepmother. This time, our Yuletide face-off concerned the central stimulus behind the personal computing revolution. I maintained that video games did (and still do) deserve much of the credit for propelling the computer industry forward. She didn’t really have an alternate theory, but kept saying, “no way” and “that’s baloney.” Well, I hate to say I told you so, Laura, but the Guinness Book of World Records don’t lie:
“The first version of Spacewar was developed for the PDP-1 (Programmed Data Processor-1) at MIT in 1960. The first CRT display was a converted oscilloscope used to play Spacewar. The first trackball (and thus, the first mouse) was a Spacewar control at MIT. It also is said that Ken Thompson salvaged a PDP-1 and created a new operating system, now called UNIX, so that he could play Spacewar.”
Bam! The first CRT, the first mouse, the first OS—all because of a video game. If you’re interested, Spacewar can be played here—as long as you’re not running a Windows XP operating system.
Incidentially, I was never in much doubt of my assertion because I had recently finished John Markoff’s phenomenal book, “What the Dormouse Said: How the 60s Counterculture Shaped the Personal Computer Industry.” Pick it up if you want to win arguments about personal computerdom.
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