The History of Computer Games 1850s-1970's

Many of us can go no longer than 5 minutes without getting the next technology fix, whether it be checking emails on a smart phone, social networking or just plain procrastination on the internet.

Admittedly I procrastinate on tumblr a fair amount.

Computers play an essential part of our everyday lives. There are now over 1,966,514,816 connected to the internet¹, your computer reading this blog adding to that number, but where and when did this all begin?

The history of computer games starts with the history of the computers, depicting when these intricate machines were created to improve our lives and help the advance the human race; and how they opened a new door to escapism we see today.

Jacquard Loom

It all started long ago, in the land before electricity in 1801 Jacquard loom, which was a mechanical loom controlled by a chain of cards with holes punched through, multiple rows of holes were punched into the cards, then multiple cards were strung together in a certain order (representing the desired pattern) and then fed into he loom where a hook would be raised or stopped according to a hole or solid card. Much similar to binary, with its on and off 0 and 1.

This was seen as an important step in the direction of computers as being able to change the pattern the loom would make by changing cards was an important concept that influenced computer programming and data entry.²

What followed this was Charles Babbage's Difference Engine in 1849, which is an automatic mechanical calculator.³ It consists of a series of columns, representing decimal places and used to calculate equations other important works. However it was never actually built after being funded by the government for 20 years. It was an important step in computing, another foundation block.

Audio Oscillator

Nothing really progressed until World War II became the kick up the rear to computers as they were needed. This resulted in the audio oscillator in 1939.

The Zuse Z3 was the first working programmable, full digital automatic computer, made in 1941 by Germans for analyse of wing flutter.⁴

In 1943 the colossus computer operated by women was fundamental to cracking the enigma code, I had never heard of this before and that is sad as these women were not only detrimental to the war but to our survival and technology.

Another notable contribution to the development of computers was the Cathode Ray Amusement Device in 1947, I find this name funny but it was the first interactive electronic game. It was based on World War II radar displays, the players turned dials to adjust the trajectory of light beams in a attempt to hit targets printed on screen overlays.⁵ It was never released commercially.

In 1951 the LEO was the first computer to be used for commercial business applications. ⁶ It took up the space of a whole room, but made the admin jobs of business such as payroll and inventories a lot easier and less time consuming.

The special contribution to this time line of computing though is the 1960 DEC PDP-1, which was the first computer to have what could be recognised as a game. Pong. It was eventually developed and released by Atari for people to play in 1972 in arcades.

The Journey from the beginning to 1970 was a long and important road, but the rate of development increases dramatically from then onwards.

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1 http://uk.ask.com/question/how-many-computers-are-there-in-the-world
2 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacquard_loom^↩
3 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Difference_engine^↩
4 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Z3_(computer)^↩
5 http://classicgames.about.com/od/classicvideogames101/p/CathodeDevice.htm^↩
6 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LEO_(computer)^↩