The early history of video games dates back to 1947, with a missile simulator which uses analog circuitry.

1947

• The earliest known interactive electronic game was created by Thomas T. Goldsmith Jr.
  Thomas T. Goldsmith Jr.
  Thomas Toliver Goldsmith, Jr. was an American television pioneer, the co-inventor of the first arcade game to use a cathode ray tube, and a professor of physics at Furman University.-Biography:...
  
   and Estle Ray Mann on a cathode ray tube
  Cathode ray tube
  The cathode ray tube is a vacuum tube containing an electron gun and a fluorescent screen used to view images. It has a means to accelerate and deflect the electron beam onto the fluorescent screen to create the images. The image may represent electrical waveforms , pictures , radar targets and...
  
  . The patent was filed on January 25, 1947 and issued on December 14, 1948. The game was a missile simulator inspired by radar displays from World War II. It used analog circuitry, not digital, to control the CRT beam and position a dot on the screen. Screen overlays were used for targets since graphics could not be drawn at the time.

1948

Alan Turing

Alan Turing

Alan Mathison Turing, OBE, FRS , was an English mathematician, logician, cryptanalyst, and computer scientist. He was highly influential in the development of computer science, providing a formalisation of the concepts of "algorithm" and "computation" with the Turing machine, which played a...

 and colleague D. G. Champernowne

D. G. Champernowne

David Gawen Champernowne was an English economist and mathematician.After academic work at Cambridge and the London School of Economics, he worked at the London School of Economics and Cambridge University...

 wrote a chess

Chess

Chess is a two-player board game played on a chessboard, a square-checkered board with 64 squares arranged in an eight-by-eight grid. It is one of the world's most popular games, played by millions of people worldwide at home, in clubs, online, by correspondence, and in tournaments.Each player...

 playing algorithm

Algorithm

In mathematics and computer science, an algorithm is an effective method expressed as a finite list of well-defined instructions for calculating a function. Algorithms are used for calculation, data processing, and automated reasoning...

. At the time, there was not a computer powerful enough to run the algorithm. The algorithm was tested several times by human versus algorithm matches. The algorithm won once and lost once.

1950

In March 1950, Claude Shannon devised a chess playing program that appeared in the paper "Programming a Computer for Playing Chess" published in
Philosophical Magazine. This was the first article on the problem of computer chess, published before anyone had programmed a computer to play chess.

1951

• On May 5, 1951, the NIMROD
  Nimrod (computing)
  The Nimrod was a special purpose computer that played the game of Nim, designed and built by Ferranti and displayed at the Exhibition of Science during the 1951 Festival of Britain. Later, when the Festival ended, the computer was shown in Berlin...
  
   computer was presented at the Science Museum (London)
  Science Museum (London)
  The Science Museum is one of the three major museums on Exhibition Road, South Kensington, London in the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea. It is part of the National Museum of Science and Industry. The museum is a major London tourist attraction....
  
   during the Festival of Britain
  Festival of Britain
  The Festival of Britain was a national exhibition in Britain in the summer of 1951. It was organised by the government to give Britons a feeling of recovery in the aftermath of war and to promote good quality design in the rebuilding of British towns and cities. The Festival's centrepiece was in...
  
  . Using a panel of lights for its display, it was designed exclusively to play the game of NIM
  Nim
  Nim is a mathematical game of strategy in which two players take turns removing objects from distinct heaps. On each turn, a player must remove at least one object, and may remove any number of objects provided they all come from the same heap....
  
  ; this was the first instance of a digital computer designed specifically to play a game. NIMROD could play either the traditional or "reverse" form of the game.

• TV engineer named Ralph Baer
  Ralph H. Baer
  Ralph H. Baer is a German-born American video game pioneer, inventor, engineer, known as "The Father of Video Games", who is noted for his many contributions to games and the video game industry...
  
   was asked by the chief engineer at Loral to build "the best television set
  Television set
  A television set is a device that combines a tuner, display, and speakers for the purpose of viewing television. Television sets became a popular consumer product after the Second World War, using vacuum tubes and cathode ray tube displays...
  
   in the world". Baer came up with an idea for playing game
  Game
  A game is structured playing, usually undertaken for enjoyment and sometimes used as an educational tool. Games are distinct from work, which is usually carried out for remuneration, and from art, which is more often an expression of aesthetic or ideological elements...
  
  s on the television set, but the idea was turned down.

• In November 1951, Dr. Dietrich Prinz wrote the original chess playing program for the Manchester Ferranti computer.

1952

• In 1952, one of the first video games ever made, OXO
  OXO
  OXO was a computer game written for the EDSAC computer in 1952, an implementation of the game known as Noughts and Crosses in the UK, or tic-tac-toe in the United States. It was written by Alexander S. Douglas as an illustration for his Ph.D. thesis on human-computer interaction for the University...
  
  (also known as Noughts and Crosses
  Tic-tac-toe
  Tic-tac-toe, also called wick wack woe and noughts and crosses , is a pencil-and-paper game for two players, X and O, who take turns marking the spaces in a 3×3 grid. The X player usually goes first...
  
  ) by A. S. Douglas. OXO was written for the EDSAC
  EDSAC
  Electronic Delay Storage Automatic Calculator was an early British computer. The machine, having been inspired by John von Neumann's seminal First Draft of a Report on the EDVAC, was constructed by Maurice Wilkes and his team at the University of Cambridge Mathematical Laboratory in England...
  
   computer
  Computer
  A computer is a programmable machine designed to sequentially and automatically carry out a sequence of arithmetic or logical operations. The particular sequence of operations can be changed readily, allowing the computer to solve more than one kind of problem...
  
  . The game was a Tic-tac-toe
  Tic-tac-toe
  Tic-tac-toe, also called wick wack woe and noughts and crosses , is a pencil-and-paper game for two players, X and O, who take turns marking the spaces in a 3×3 grid. The X player usually goes first...
  
   based game, played against the computer, and although OXO never gained any real popularity, because the EDSAC was available only at Cambridge, it was still a milestone in the history of video games
  History of video games
  The history of video games goes as far back as the 1940s, when in 1947 Thomas T. Goldsmith, Jr. and Estle Ray Mann filed a United States patent request for an invention they described as a "cathode ray tube amusement device." Video gaming would not reach mainstream popularity until the 1970s and...
  
  .
• Christopher S. Strachey created a program on the Ferranti machine which, by the summer of 1952, "could play a complete game of draughts (checkers) at a reasonable speed". Arthur Samuel built on his work to make a checkers-playing program for the IBM 701
  IBM 701
  The IBM 701, known as the Defense Calculator while in development, was announced to the public on April 29, 1952, and was IBM’s first commercial scientific computer...
  
  , which ran at the end of the year.

1958

• Tennis for Two
  Tennis for Two
  Tennis for Two was a game developed in 1958 on an analog computer, which simulates a game of tennis or ping pong on an oscilloscope. Created by American physicist William Higinbotham, it is important in the history of video games as one of the first electronic games to use a graphical...
  
  was a computer game developed in 1958 on an oscilloscope
  Oscilloscope
  An oscilloscope is a type of electronic test instrument that allows observation of constantly varying signal voltages, usually as a two-dimensional graph of one or more electrical potential differences using the vertical or 'Y' axis, plotted as a function of time,...
  
   which simulated a game of tennis
  Tennis
  Tennis is a sport usually played between two players or between two teams of two players each . Each player uses a racket that is strung to strike a hollow rubber ball covered with felt over a net into the opponent's court. Tennis is an Olympic sport and is played at all levels of society at all...
  
   or ping pong. It was created by William Higinbotham
  William Higinbotham
  William A. Higginbotham , an American physicist, is credited with creating one of the first computer games, Tennis for Two. Like Pong, it is a portrait of a game of tennis or ping-pong, but featured very different game mechanics that have no resemblance to the later game...
  
  . Unlike Pong
  Pong
  Pong is one of the earliest arcade video games, and is a tennis sports game featuring simple two-dimensional graphics. While other arcade video games such as Computer Space came before it, Pong was one of the first video games to reach mainstream popularity...
  
  and similar early games, Tennis for Two shows a simplified tennis court
  Tennis court
  A tennis court is where the game of tennis is played. It is a firm rectangular surface with a low net stretched across the center. The same surface can be used to play both doubles and singles.-Dimensions:...
  
   from the side instead of a top-down perspective. The ball
  Ball
  A ball is a round, usually spherical but sometimes ovoid, object with various uses. It is used in ball games, where the play of the game follows the state of the ball as it is hit, kicked or thrown by players. Balls can also be used for simpler activities, such as catch, marbles and juggling...
  
   is affected by gravity and must be played over the net. The game was controlled by an analog computer
  Analog computer
  An analog computer is a form of computer that uses the continuously-changeable aspects of physical phenomena such as electrical, mechanical, or hydraulic quantities to model the problem being solved...
  
   and "consisted mostly of resistors, capacitors and relays, but where fast switching was needed – when the ball was in play – transistor switches were used".

1959

In 1959-1961, a collection of interactive graphical programs were created on the TX-0 machine at MIT:

• Mouse in the Maze: which allowed users to place maze walls, bits of cheese, and (in some versions) glasses of martini by way of a light pen interacting with the screen. One could then release the mouse and watch it traverse the maze to find the goodies.

• Tic-Tac-Toe: Using the light pen, the user could play a simple game of naughts and crosses against the computer.

1961

• A DEC memo M-1098 from March 31, 1961 references a Kalah game playing program developed for the PDP-1.

1962

• Spacewar! is released, one of the earliest known digital computer games. Conceived and written by Massachusetts Institute of Technology
  Massachusetts Institute of Technology
  The Massachusetts Institute of Technology is a private research university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts. MIT has five schools and one college, containing a total of 32 academic departments, with a strong emphasis on scientific and technological education and research.Founded in 1861 in...
  
   (MIT) students including Stephen Russell
  Steve Russell
  Steve "Slug" Russell is a programmer and computer scientist most famous for creating Spacewar!, one of the earliest videogames, in 1961 with the fellow members of the Tech Model Railroad Club at MIT working on a DEC Digital PDP-1...
  
   who programmed it, the Spacewar! game first ran in early 1962 on the PDP-1
  PDP-1
  The PDP-1 was the first computer in Digital Equipment Corporation's PDP series and was first produced in 1960. It is famous for being the computer most important in the creation of hacker culture at MIT, BBN and elsewhere...
  
   donated to the school by Digital Equipment Corporation
  Digital Equipment Corporation
  Digital Equipment Corporation was a major American company in the computer industry and a leading vendor of computer systems, software and peripherals from the 1960s to the 1990s...
  
   (DEC). Early versions of the game contained a randomly generated background starfield.

• Later, a program called Expensive Planetarium
  Expensive Planetarium
  Expensive Planetarium is the star display written by Peter Samson for Spacewar!, one of the first interactive computer games. Conceived and written by Massachusetts Institute of Technology students including Stephen Russell who programmed it, the Spacewar! game first ran in early 1962 on the PDP-1...
  
  (referring to the price of the PDP-1 computer) was incorporated into the main code, replacing the randomly generated star field. The program was based on real star charts that scrolled slowly: at any one time, 45% of the night sky was visible, every star down to the fifth magnitude.

1965

• First ever baseball simulation game written in BASIC by John Kemeny
  John George Kemeny
  John George Kemeny was a Hungarian American mathematician, computer scientist, and educator best known for co-developing the BASIC programming language in 1964 with Thomas E. Kurtz. Kemeny served as the 13th President of Dartmouth College from 1970 to 1981 and pioneered the use of computers in...
  
   and later edited by Keith Bellairs on January 13, 1965.

1966

• Larry Bethurum, from the Phillips Exter Academy, submitted the BASIC source code of a bingo game to the DECUS user group. Comments in the code suggest the game was written on January 23, 1966.

1967

• First basketball simulation game written in BASIC by Charles R. Bacheller in May, 1967.

• A baseball game that simulates the 1967 World Series written in BASIC by Jacob Bergmann in August 1967.

1969

• Space Travel
  Space Travel (video game)
  Space Travel was an early computer game that simulated travel in the solar system. It was the development of this game that spurred the development of the Unix operating system. It is sometimes claimed that the unrelated game Spacewar! had led to the development of Unix...
  
   is written by Ken Thompson
  Ken Thompson
  Kenneth Lane Thompson , commonly referred to as ken in hacker circles, is an American pioneer of computer science...
  
   for a Multics
  Multics
  Multics was an influential early time-sharing operating system. The project was started in 1964 in Cambridge, Massachusetts...
  
   system.
• Hamurabi
  Hamurabi
  Hamurabi is a text-based game of land and resource management and is one of the earliest computer games. Its name is a shortening of Hammurabi, reduced to fit an eight-character limit.-History:...
  
  , one of the first strategy game
  Strategy game
  A strategy game or strategic game is a game in which the players' uncoerced, and often autonomous decision-making skills have a high significance in determining the outcome...
  
  s, is released.

1970

A number of games programmed in BASIC can be found in the DECUS library back-up tapes. Unfortunately, most games do not include the name of the programmer or the date when the program was written.

Name	Description	Programmer(s)	Archived Date
1queen.gam	Plays a game based on chess moves	Unknown	9/2/70
apawam.gam	Plays a round of golf at the apawamis country club	Unknown	9/2/70
bandit.gam	The computer is a slot machine and you are the player	Unknown	9/21/70
batnum.gam	Battle of numbers between user and computer	Unknown	9/21/70
bridge.gam	Bridge practice session	Unknown	9/21/70
craps.gam	A session at the craps table	Unknown	9/21/70
digits.gam	Guesses a sequence of numbers	Unknown	9/2/70
ftball.gam	Generates a digital championship football game	John G. Kemeny	9/21/70
gamnin.gam	Plays game of Nim	Unknown	9/2/70
hangmn.gam	Plays hangman	Unknown	9/21/70
horserac.gam	A day at the races at South Portland High	Laurie Chevalier	9/2/70
learn1.gam	Learns to play a game of "21"	Unknown	9/2/70
nim.dem	Plays the ancient game of Nim	Unknown	9/2/70
qubic.gam	Plays 3-dimensional Tic Tac Toe	Unknown	9/21/70
roulet.gam	Generates game of Roulette	Unknown	9/2/70
tictac.gam	Plays game of tic-tac-toe	Unknown	9/2/70
war.gam	Plays the card game of war	Unknown	9/21/70

1971

• On 22 March, Ralph Baer files with the United States Patent and Trademark Office
  United States Patent and Trademark Office
  The United States Patent and Trademark Office is an agency in the United States Department of Commerce that issues patents to inventors and businesses for their inventions, and trademark registration for product and intellectual property identification.The USPTO is based in Alexandria, Virginia,...
  
   regarding a patent
  Patent
  A patent is a form of intellectual property. It consists of a set of exclusive rights granted by a sovereign state to an inventor or their assignee for a limited period of time in exchange for the public disclosure of an invention....
  
   for "television gaming and training apparatus."
• In June, Bill Pitts and Hugh Tuck form Computer Recreations, Inc.
• Magnavox
  Magnavox
  Magnavox is a US electronics company founded by Edwin Pridham and Peter L. Jensen, who invented the moving-coil loudspeaker in 1915 at their lab in Napa, California. They formed Magnavox in 1917 in order to market their inventions....
  
   signs a license agreement with Sanders Associates
  Sanders Associates
  Sanders Associates was a defense contractor in Nashua, New Hampshire, USA, from 1951 until it was sold in 1986. It is now part of BAE Systems Electronics & Integrated Solutions, a subsidiary of BAE Systems. It concentrated on developing and manufacturing electronic systems, notably aircraft...
  
   regarding the Odyssey
  Magnavox Odyssey
  The Magnavox Odyssey is the world's first home video game console. It was first demonstrated on May 24, 1972 and released in August of that year, predating the Atari Pong home consoles by three years....
  
   video game console
  Video game console
  A video game console is an interactive entertainment computer or customized computer system that produces a video display signal which can be used with a display device to display a video game...
  
  .
• Nakamura Manufacturing Ltd. adopts "Namco
  Namco
  is a Japanese corporation best known as a former video game developer and publisher. Following a merger with Bandai in September 2005, the two companies' game production assets were spun off into Namco Bandai Games on March 31, 2006. Namco Ltd. was re-established to continue domestic operation of...
  
  " as a brand name.

Notable releases

• In September, Computer Recreations, Inc. installs Galaxy Game
  Galaxy Game
  Galaxy Game is the earliest known coin-operated computer or video game. It was installed at the Tresidder Union at Stanford University in September, 1971, two months before the release of Computer Space, the first mass-produced video game...
  
  , a version of Spacewar! for PDP-11
  PDP-11
  The PDP-11 was a series of 16-bit minicomputers sold by Digital Equipment Corporation from 1970 into the 1990s, one of a succession of products in the PDP series. The PDP-11 replaced the PDP-8 in many real-time applications, although both product lines lived in parallel for more than 10 years...
  
   hardware and the first coin-operated video arcade
  Video arcade
  An amusement arcade or video arcade is a venue where people play arcade games such as video games, pinball machines, electro-mechanical games, redemption games, merchandisers , or coin-operated billiards or air hockey tables...
  
   game
  Arcade game
  An arcade game is a coin-operated entertainment machine, usually installed in public businesses such as restaurants, bars, and amusement arcades. Most arcade games are video games, pinball machines, electro-mechanical games, redemption games, and merchandisers...
  
  , in Tresidder Union at Stanford University
  Stanford University
  The Leland Stanford Junior University, commonly referred to as Stanford University or Stanford, is a private research university on an campus located near Palo Alto, California. It is situated in the northwestern Santa Clara Valley on the San Francisco Peninsula, approximately northwest of San...
  
  .
• In November, Nutting Associates
  Nutting Associates
  Nutting Associates was an early arcade game manufacturer from Mountain View, California, formed in 1968 by Bill Nutting. They introduced a number of mechanical coin-operated games, starting with a quiz game known as Computer Quiz, and moving on to more common fare like shooting games.In August...
  
   releases 1,500 cabinets of Nolan Bushnell
  Nolan Bushnell
  Nolan K. Bushnell is an American engineer and entrepreneur who founded both Atari, Inc and the Chuck E. Cheese's Pizza-Time Theaters chain...
  
  's Computer Space
  Computer Space
  Computer Space is a video arcade game released in November 1971 by Nutting Associates. Created by Nolan Bushnell and Ted Dabney, who would both later found Atari, Inc., it is generally accepted that it was the world's first commercially sold coin-operated video game — and indeed, the first...
  
  , the first commercially released video game in the arcades.
• Don Rawitsch, Paul Dillenberger and Bill Heinemann, students at Carleton College
  Carleton College
  Carleton College is an independent non-sectarian, coeducational, liberal arts college in Northfield, Minnesota, USA. The college enrolls 1,958 undergraduate students, and employs 198 full-time faculty members. In 2012 U.S...
  
   develop The Oregon Trail
  The Oregon Trail (computer game)
  The Oregon Trail is a computer game originally developed by Don Rawitsch, Bill Heinemann, and Paul Dillenberger in 1971 and produced by the Minnesota Educational Computing Consortium in 1974. The original game was designed to teach school children about the realities of 19th century pioneer life...
  
  for a mainframe
  Mainframe computer
  Mainframes are powerful computers used primarily by corporate and governmental organizations for critical applications, bulk data processing such as census, industry and consumer statistics, enterprise resource planning, and financial transaction processing.The term originally referred to the...
  
   with teletype terminals.
• Don Daglow
  Don Daglow
  Don Daglow is an American computer game and video game designer, programmer and producer. He is best known for designing a series of pioneering simulation games and role-playing games, as well as the first computer baseball game and the first graphical MMORPG, all between 1971 and 1995...
  
   programs the computer baseball game
  Baseball (computer game)
  Baseball was one of the first-ever baseball computer games, and was created on a PDP-10 mainframe computer at Pomona College in 1971 by student Don Daglow. The game continued to be enhanced periodically through 1976...
  
   on a PDP-10
  PDP-10
  The PDP-10 was a mainframe computer family manufactured by Digital Equipment Corporation from the late 1960s on; the name stands for "Programmed Data Processor model 10". The first model was delivered in 1966...
  
   mainframe computer
  Mainframe computer
  Mainframes are powerful computers used primarily by corporate and governmental organizations for critical applications, bulk data processing such as census, industry and consumer statistics, enterprise resource planning, and financial transaction processing.The term originally referred to the...
  
   at Pomona College
  Pomona College
  Pomona College is a private, residential, liberal arts college in Claremont, California. Founded in 1887 in Pomona, California by a group of Congregationalists, the college moved to Claremont in 1889 to the site of a hotel, retaining its name. The school enrolls 1,548 students.The founding member...
  
  .
• Mike Mayfield develops Star Trek
  Star Trek (text game)
  Star Trek is a text-based computer game that puts the player in command of the USS Enterprise on a mission to hunt down and destroy an invading fleet of Klingon warships...
  
  on a Scientific Data Systems
  Scientific Data Systems
  Scientific Data Systems, or SDS, was an American computer company founded in September 1961 by Max Palevsky, a veteran of Packard Bell and Bendix, along with eleven other computer scientists. SDS was an early adopter of integrated circuits in computer design and the first to employ silicon...
  
   Sigma 7 minicomputer
  Minicomputer
  A minicomputer is a class of multi-user computers that lies in the middle range of the computing spectrum, in between the largest multi-user systems and the smallest single-user systems...
  
  .