Pong Released
Atari's Pong became the first commercially successful video game arcade cabinet
November 29, 1972
When Did Video Games Begin?
The history of the first video game depends on how you define the term. Many historians point to October 1958, when physicist William Higinbotham created a game called Tennis for Two at Brookhaven National Laboratory in New York. Using an oscilloscope and analog computer, he built an interactive display that showed a simple tennis court from the side, with a curved line representing the ball's arc. It was designed as a fun exhibit for the laboratory's annual public day and attracted long lines of visitors. Higinbotham never patented the idea or pursued it commercially, viewing it as a casual project rather than a significant invention.
Other Early Claimants
Others argue that the first video game was Spacewar!, developed in 1962 by Steve Russell and colleagues at MIT. It allowed two players to control spaceships in combat and was widely distributed to early computer users. Some go further back to Cathode-Ray Tube Amusement Machine, patented in 1947 by Thomas Goldsmith Jr. and Estle Ray Mann, which overlaid a transparent screen on a cathode-ray tube for players to aim at targets. The 1952 program OXO, a version of tic-tac-toe created by Alexander Douglas at Cambridge, also has its advocates. The debate reflects the fact that gaming technology evolved gradually rather than appearing all at once.
From Labs to Living Rooms
Whatever its precise origin, video gaming moved from research institutions to the public through arcade machines in the early 1970s. Pong, released by Atari in 1972, was the first commercially successful arcade video game and helped establish the industry. The home gaming market exploded with the Atari 2600 in 1977 and later with Nintendo's consoles in the 1980s. Today, the global video game industry generates over $200 billion in annual revenue, surpassing the film and music industries combined. It employs hundreds of thousands of people and has produced some of the most culturally influential entertainment of the past half century.