A recollection of Harlan Anderson, one of the founders of Digital Equipment Corporation, who I recently interviewed:
“With the possible exception of science fiction writers, no one really had a clear idea of exactly where this new computer technology was going to lead. One interesting direction it took after I had left Lincoln Lab was in the development of computer games. During 1961, after I had been at DEC for four years, we gave a computer to MIT’s electrical engineering department for the students’ use. With it, they developed what was really the very first computer game. It was called “Space Wars,” and it involved shooting down rocket ships in a programmed constellation of stars and planets. Students could control the speed and direction of a space craft on the screen, and shoot at targets. The game wasn’t easy to play by a long shot; players had to control and fire their space ship with a series of toggle switches which could be cumbersome compared with the joysticks and other hand-held devices of later video games.”
– Christopher Hartman
