History0

Look carefully at the background picture ~ amongst the collection of instruments lined up for Visitor's Day at the Brookhaven National Laboratory in 1958 ~ you will see the small round screen of an oscilloscope, below it two identical white boxes with some controls mounted on top. Yes, there's a very familiar looking arrangement there, two cables leading to a pair of manual controllers!
On the oscilloscope display you would see a horizontal line representing a net, and a green glowing spot representing a tennis ball which two players could send back and forwards by means of the controllers. This portion of the exhibit was demonstrating the versatility of a programmable 'analog' computer, together with some digital switching probably by reed relays, where a realistic trajectory of a ball could be generated, complete with the effects of gravity and with different 'bounce' characteristics depending on whether or not the 'ball' hit the 'net'.

"Tennis Programming" was so popular on that visitors' day in 1958, Brookhaven National Laboratory retained the exhibit for two more years.
During that time many high-school students delighted in playing this precursor to "Pong" ~ which would only appear nearly ten years later!

The late Willie Higinbotham was the genius who designed this clever ancestor of today's video game consoles and without a doubt deserves his place in any history of computer games.

All pictures on this page courtesy of the Brookhaven National Laboratory