Video Games: Timeline

Updated February 21, 2017 | Factmonster Staff Updated by an Factmonster Editor on February 21, 2017

Timeline: Video Games
Part I: Early Years
by Amanda Kudler


1958	1961	1965	1970	1972	Next: 1975-1984

1958

Physicist Willy Higinbotham invents the first "video game" at the Brookhaven National Laboratory in Upton, New York. His game, a table tennis-like game, was played on an oscilloscope.

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1961

Steve Russell, a student at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), creates Spacewar, the first interactive computer game. It runs on a Digital PDP-1 mainframe computer, and the graphics are made up of ASCII text characters.

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1966

Ralph Baer, an engineer at Sanders Associates, receives support from his company (a military electronics consulting firm in NH) to explore his idea of creating interactive games using a television.

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1967

Baer and team are successful in creating two interactive TV games—a chase game and a tennis game. They are also able to manipulate a toy gun so that it detects spots of light on the TV screen.

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1970

Magnavox licenses Baer's TV game from Sanders Associates

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Nolan Bushnell and Ted Dabney (future founders of Atari) begin their attempt to create an arcade version of Spacewar, calling it Computer Space.

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1971

Computer Space becomes first video arcade game ever released. 1500 games are distributed. Public consensus is that it is too difficult to play.

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1972

April 25: A U.S. patent is issued to Ralph Baer for "A Television Gaming Apparatus and Method"
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May 24: Magnavox's Odyssey, the first home video game system, is showcased at a convention in Burlingame, CA, and is released to the public later that year.
Top; Bushnell and Dabney found Atari. They name the company after a term from the Japanese game "Go". "Atari" is equivalent to "check" in a chess game.
Top; Al Alcorn is hired by Atari to program video games. The first game created by Atari is Pong. Ping-Pong, the original name, is already copyrighted, so the makers name it Pong after the sound of a ball hitting the paddle.
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Next: Part II—1975-1984