Video in progress...
Release Date: 25th of January, 1947 (Patent submitted)
Platform: Standalone Device
Genre: Prototype
Developer(s): Thomas T. Goldsmith, Jr., Estle Ray Mann
Publisher(s): Never published; patent granted 14th of December, 1948
Welcome to my "soft reboot" of Obsessive Gaming Chronology. With me pushing my video content into a new direction, I want the blog to reflect that change as well. As you'll see here, it means starting over from the very beginning and going into more detail; more fully telling the story of every game, continually adding more and colours to fill in the canvas of video game history - all in chronological order, as per usual. Some things I just can't change. What I am changing is my numbering/tracking system - no more prehistory/history divide - we're starting at 1 and never stopping. I'm very intent on simplifying what I can to make it easier to follow along and keep track of. Of course, there'll be exceptions along the way - non-games, video game-adjacent titles, and newly recovered/discovered games that I'll have to go back to, so I'll keep the "gaiden game" concept around for that.
First Snow
As I write this, it's snowing in Australia. That's probably shocking for some of you who don't live in this country. You likely think that Australia consists of exclusively beaches and desert. To be fair, most of Australia is that; it's the part of the country I grew up in. But where I now live is more like a forest. Think English countryside - cold, lots of green, and lots of rain. And snow. This was my first time ever seeing snow. It's a day I will mark down, and will never forget.
Life is full of firsts. There's always a first time of doing something, experiencing something, or the first time somebody invented something that is now so commonplace today that we think it has always existed. And that is exactly what today's article is about - the first invention of the video game.
Maybe.
There's plenty of debate and conjecture over what the first video game is. Before the turn of the century, most though it was Pong, or even possibly Spacewar!. I've spent a fair bit of time dissecting this discussion in the past, and if you've read any of my former articles on the topic, you will know where I stand coming into this debate. You could read those former articles if you so choose (they aren't very good), but it may do you well to avoid them and come into this one without any preconceived notion of where I stand. For all you know, I could change my view at the conclusion of this article.
The story of the first video game occurs far before Pong in 1972, far before Spacewar! in 1961. Heck, even before the 1950s games. In fact, this story starts back in the *1930s.*
Thomas the Tinkerer
The video game story begins with a man named Thomas T. Goldsmith, Jr. Most of the following story comes from a four-and-a-half hour interview conducted with him in 1997. Thomas Toliver Goldsmith, Jr., was born in Greenville, South Carolina, 1910. The son of a real estate appraiser, his interest in electronics, especially television, began early in his formative years. At age 10, with the help of his older cousin, he built an electronic hearing amplifier for his grandmother, to replace the ear trumpet she had used for many years. Despite his efforts on this makeshift hearing aid (which, by all accounts, actually worked), his grandmother still preferred her ol' reliable ear trumpet. But that was just the beginning for Goldsmith's technical tinkering.
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| Thomas T. Goldsmith, Jr. (1910 - 2009) |
As a teenager, he began experimenting with mechanical televisions and crystal radios. He mostly did this in his own time, as school didn't really help develop his interest in electronics; he flunked 2nd grade arithmetic, and also junior high Latin (along with his entire class!) He switched to a science track in chemistry - far more in line with his interests, although it didn't provide the same credit as the classical track. Still, it would allow him to get to Furman University, right there in his hometown of Greenville. Once there, he changed track again, opting to pursue a physics major instead of chemistry.
While studying at Furman, he decided that he wanted to keep pursuing this line of physics and engineering. Being inspired by a two-volume set on the life of Thomas Edison - which he won as a prize for a chemistry paper in high school - he worked as a paper boy while studying to save up enough money to attend Cornell University, all the way up in New York. After graduating from Furman in 1931, with a Bachelor of Science, and $250 in his pocket, he made that trek to Cornell, where he would spend five years completing his doctorate. Sometime during his studies, he became part of the faculty, directing the university's Domino Laboratory.
It was during his tenure as director at the Domino Laboratory that Goldsmith really got to experiment with the best electronics that the 1930s had to offer. Oscillographs, microwave tubes, and all sorts of electronic testing equipment. The lab was his playground. He also got to see the beginnings of television at the 1933 Chicago World's Fair - a ten-inch cathode ray tube, created by a Russian engineer. He saw the future in this technology, and so took classes on it and radar at Cornell. This would prove to be a defining investment for him.
After completing his thesis paper, he went on a trip to Montclair, New Jersey, with one of his Cornell professors. While there, he had a chance to visit the DuMont Laboratory, run by Allen B. DuMont. Goldsmith had heard of him, but never met him before, as the Cornell labs had commissioned DuMont to build a custom cathode-ray tube for them; those are what DuMont was known for at that time. Goldsmith first met DuMont there in New Jersey, and they discussed cathode-ray tubes. DuMont was evidently impressed by Goldsmith, and offered him a job at the lab almost on the spot. This was in 1936 - Goldsmith would end up spending 30 years with the DuMont company, where his title would be Chief/Director of Research. His first assignment? To be a technical consultant on a patent litigation case against his former professor at Cornell. Great way to start your new job, eh? According to Goldsmith's testimony, his former colleague was a good sport about it.
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| Goldsmith's boss, Allen B. DuMont (1901 - 1965) By counter currents.com - http://www.counter-currents.com/2012/05/the-dumont-television-network/, Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=51279176 |
In the following years, Goldsmith and DuMont Labs focused on building cathode-ray tubes, pioneering television sets and TV broadcasting. A whole lot more than this went on - Goldsmith was heavily involved in a lot of the development of early TV broadcasting, the creation of educational TV programming, and the original formation of the NTSC standard we know now, but we don't have time to get into all that here, otherwise this'll balloon out into a 10,000 word dissertation.
The United States' entrance into World War II completely shifted Goldsmith's (and the entire electronics industry's) focus away from television development to full-scale manufacturing of cathode-ray tubes for military usage, and research & development in measures and countermeasures. Goldsmith himself was made chairman of what was known as the "Cathode-Ray Tube Committee" of the Radio Manufacturer's Association at the outbreak of the war. It became his job to teach all the United States government manufacturing contractors to build cathode-ray tubes - all exactly the same, all interchangeable for military usage.
On the radar side of things, Goldsmith worked with MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) for radar measures, Harvard for countermeasures. He worked on creating devices, such as a P^3I, using cathode-ray tubes, that would display precision data about incoming enemy vessels and attacks on a small screen within the cathode-ray tube.
The war ended on the 2nd of September, 1945, ending DuMont and Goldsmith's association with military operations. It was back to what they knew best - television. All that time spent on military R&D could now be spent elsewhere, giving Goldsmith the opportunity to do some experiments in other potential commercial uses for cathode-ray tubes.
The Device
And so, using both his cathode-ray tube knowledge, and radar research & development from the war effort, Thomas Goldsmith created a device that's display could be manipulated by the consumer. He created a game, known to us by its patent name, Cathode-Ray Tube Amusement Device, U.S. patent no. 2,455,992. The patent was filed on the 25th of January, 1947, and accepted on the 14th of December, 1948.
Unfortunately, Goldsmith doesn't speak of the CRT Amusement Device during that 1997 interview. So all my information outside of the patent comes from secondary sources.
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| The patent. |
Now, it wasn't just Goldsmith who worked on this project. He had one co-conspirator in the invention of this game - Estle Ray Mann. Unfortunately, there's surprisingly very little information known about him, which is a great shame. He was born in 1904 in West Virginia, and died in 1965 in Oak Ridge, Anderson, Tennessee. He was either an electronics engineer, physicist, or both, who worked at DuMont at the same time as Goldsmith. But when he started, and for how long he was active at DuMont, and what other projects he was involved in, we just don't know.
The concept for the gameplay of the CRT Amusement Device was inspired by the radar displays Goldsmith worked on during the war. In fact, the game overall is very much inspired by war. Ah, video games and war - a perfect match from the very start...
I digress. The patent describes the game as one requiring,
"care and skill in playing it... skill can be increased with practice... care contributes to success."
Sounds an awful lot like the design mentality of an arcade game. Practice and precision are the keys to success. I'm now recalling the many hours I spent a couple of years ago on honing my mediocre skills at Galaxian. That's an excellent game that I can't wait to get to.
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| The patent, page 2. |
The basic design of the game is that "the trace of the ray or electron beam" is presented on the face of a cathode-ray tube. The player then has the ability to manipulate the path of the beam, which moves automatically and resets continuously. Altering the path of the beam, is required to hit targets that can be placed anywhere on the face of the cathode-ray tube - the patent suggests aeroplanes (for getting the feel of shooting some Messerschmitts out of the sky.) Think of it like controlling the path of a missile - you have to guide it into the target, but you also need to make sure that it's blast timer is set so that it explodes when it reaches the target. The patent also explains that "the game can be made more spectacular... by making a visible explosion of the cathode-ray beam when the target is hit." Just to add that little bit of feedback and visual interest.
This CRT Amusement Device doesn't seem so foreign in terms of its game design. What we've got here is essentially an anti-air missile game. It actually reminds me of a bunch of different games. The Artillery genre might be what's first thought of - adjusting trajectories and blast timing to hit a distant target. I'm not the only person to think this, either. But, I'm also reminded of 1970s games like Midway's Guided Missile, which has you control anti-air missiles into moving targets; or Atari's Air-Sea Battle on the 2600 (or its parent arcade game, Anti-Aircraft from 1974), which also allows for some control of missiles for hitting moving targets. It could also be argued that the knob controls prefigure the paddle control schemes we'll see in games like Pong and Breakout. You can see the foundational building blocks of video game design present in Goldsmith and Mann's game, as they show up in games thirty years later!
By all reports, there was only ever one hand built prototype of the device ever made. There are conflicting reports concerning why this was the case. On one hand, DuMont was not in the financial position to develop the device further, and so it remained an in-house experiment. On the other, Goldsmith possibly only ever intended the device to be an experiment in the aforementioned alternative commercial uses for cathode-ray tubes - which itself may have been an initiative spurred on by DuMont's failing financial position. In that sense, a synthesis of the two accounts may be possible, and the CRT Amusement Device may simply have not been considered a financially viable product by Goldsmith and the higher-ups at DuMont.
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| RDZ's CRT Amusement Device Simulator (or CRADS, for short.) |
You might be wondering, then, how could I provide such a gameplay description and reminisce on similarities to other games, if this 1947 game only ever had one prototype built? Well, that's where the Cathode-Ray Tube Amusement Device Simulator comes in! You may remember (if you've been around this blog for ages), for my Pool and Tennis for Two articles, I used simulators for both games, sourced from Retrogame Deconstruction Zone. Well, it turns out he made a simulator for the CRT Amusement Device, too. He explains that this was a tricky one to do, as we have no idea what the display or really any part of the game looked like outside of what the patent shows us. So the simulator is made to be as close as possible to what's shown of the design in the patent.
In all fairness, I think it's a pretty good simulation for getting an idea of how the game would've likely worked. The CRT screen looks like a radar, and the controls - a set of dials next to the screen, emphasises the radar motif even further. The overall design is also not too dissimilar to an old-school TV set, which is hardly coincidental considering the game was made by guys in the TV manufacturing business. The knobs are what's used to manipulate the characteristics of the electron beam that represents your missiles.
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| That little, moving dot is what the player controls with the dials on the left. |
The first pair alter the missile's trajectory, the second the timing of the explosion;, the third change the size of the beam and explosion radius (for a bit of variable difficulty), and the single knob at the bottom adjusts the brightness of the screen. The targets themselves are kind of like stickers that can be moved around the screen, sort of reminiscent of the screen overlays on old black & white arcade games, or used for Magnavox Odyssey games.
Now, I did say at the start that this is maybe the first ever video game. People today like to make a big deal out of it, and various articles online extol Goldsmith as "the grandfather of video games," a title once given to others whom we believed had the first video game, like William Higinbotham (Tennis for Two.) There are a few problems that challenge this perceived reality. For one, the Device was only ever a prototype; a mere experiment that was confined to the walls of the laboratory in which it was conceived and constructed. To put it plainly, it was an island. If there was a "video game family tree," it would be out on its own - not linked to, nor influencing any future games. We only know about its existence from the patent, and that wasn't even rediscovered until it was dragged off its dusty patent library shelf by some enterprising Bally attorneys fighting Magnavox's litigation war with the entire video game industry in the 1970s - a fact itself not even rediscovered until 2002. Let that sink in. We forgot about this game for thirty years, then forgot about it for another thirty years after its brief resurrection by Magnavox.
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| Note how the missile's trajectory had changed. That ship is cooked. |
The other trouble with making much of the CRT Amusement Device, is that some also argue that it's not even a video game at all. Two of my primary databases I use to compile my master list, MobyGames and Arcade-History, don't include the Device. Stuart Brown (Ahoy), who probably has the most popular and well-researched work on "the first video game," relegates this game into the realm of electromechanical games, on the account of its use of additional elements, and the lack of evidence for a physical prototype having actually been built. My other primary database, IGDB, also calls the Device and electromechanical game, on account of no memory or programming being present. Mind you, Ahoy does also say that "if it looks like a video game, and plays like one..." To my senses, the CRT Amusement Device appears to be a video game; it meets the majority of his overall definition, in regards to intent and video interactivity. Although, I can see the other side of the argument. Without the addition of physical targets, stuck to the CRT screen, all you have is a demonstration of real-time interactivity with a cathode-ray tube display - a mere tech demo. At that point, it's not really a game at all. That being said, I did mention earlier that black & white arcade games and the Magnavox Odyssey also used additional elements in the form of physical screen overlays for aiding gameplay. Also, in the Odyssey's case, it comes with many board game elements, and without those, the majority of games are unplayable, and system is almost relegated to a similar state as the CRT Amusement Device, sans targets.
For me, after playing the Device, and reconsidering the arguments, it's lineball. The arguments for both sides are equally valid. However, for the sake of my chronology, and for the sheer fact that many people do consider this "the first video game," I'm including it as the starting point of video game history.
Scores
With the blog reboot comes a score & review reboot, too. The system is still the same, but I'm including everything this time - no games left out! If it's going to the "The World's Biggest Video Game Tier List," I can't leave much out, can I? I will also be redoing the scores for every game I've previously covered. The only real difference you need to worry about is that game design and fun factor are now scored out of 25 instead of 20, as this allows for a full, easy-to-translate 100-point scale. Plus, those are the two most important elements of a video game to me - how smart and creative its design is, and how fun it is to play and replay. Them making up 50% of the overall score makes sense to me.
Time Played: 15 minutes
Difficulty: 3/10 (Easy)
Some skill is required in first learning, and then adjusting the missile trajectory and blast timing in order to hit the targets. The difficulty is also somewhat adjustable, with the ability to move the targets around, and to increase or decrease the blast size. Reminds me a little of how early Atari 2600 games manage difficulty with the console switches.
Gameplay: 4
For a game that could be considered "the first video game," it's got quite a few elements going on. Movable targets, adjustable difficulty and several gameplay mechanics governing how the missiles work; it's surprisingly complex - for 1947. Granted, it's not that complex by today's standards, or by the standards of the early 1970s arcade games which it resembles. Beats the stuffing out of most of the BASIC text-based games I've played, though. The scoring breakdown here basically goes: 2 points for the variable difficulty components; 2 points for the missile control mechanics.
Controls: 4
I do like the concept of making the control setup look like a radar control panel. It does, however, make the controls feel somewhat obtuse and overcomplicated, and I was unable to really come to grips with them in the simulator. I'm giving a little bit of grace in the score, as I do think it would be slightly easier turning dials on the real thing - I have to click on the dials in the simulator, which doesn't give the same feel or feedback as turning a dial.
Sound: N/A
Visual: 6
Conceptually, I really am a fan of the look of the Device. Making it look like a radar unit is a great idea for immersing the player in the concept of controlling missiles to attack enemy warplanes/ships, or whatever targets one would choose to use.
Story: N/A
Functionality: 5
Functionality is hard to determine when access to the original is not possible. Based on what's in the simulator, there seems little opportunity for things to go wrong.
Accessibility: 2
The controls do knock the accessibility score down a few pegs; it's a tricky game to get a handle on at first, both from the aesthetic and design of the control scheme.
Fun Factor: 1
Despite seeing some merits elsewhere with the Device, I don't find it all that enjoyable to play. Sure, it gets a point for some replay value in being able to adjust the difficulty by moving the targets and adjusting the blast radius. The main problem I have, though, is the lack of feedback the game gives to the player. You have to determine yourself whether you've hit the target - the screen is merely a visual guide. There being no sort of visceral impact from hitting a target totally dulls the gameplay experience for me. Combine that with the complication of the controls, and it makes for a game that isn't much fun to play.
Overall: 22
A score of 22 (weighted to 27.5) and a middling E tier placement is not half-bad for the "first video game." Even if it's not entirely a video game - it does a lot better than many actual video games. I personally just can't get past the lack of feedback from the game itself; it's not an overly rewarding experience, if an interesting one. This is going to be my frame of reference score for the future, also. "Soft reboot" means rebooting the scoring system and tier list as well. The list as is will remain, all the old game scores are going to get rebalanced as I revisit them.
Epilogue
So, what did Tom Goldsmith do after the CRT Amusement Device? Well, he remained with DuMont for many years, during the company's slow demise, beginning with the sale of assets to Emerson Radio in 1958, and after its merger with Fairchild Camera and Instrument (later Fairchild Semiconductor - both Emerson and Fairchild are companies with which we will have much to discuss later down the track.) in 1960. Allen B. DuMont died in 1965, and Goldsmith quit the TV industry altogether following year. It all came full circle for him, as in the very same year he took up a teaching position at his old Alma Mater - Furman University. He retired in 1975, and passed away in 2009, at the ripe old age of 99, with a long legacy of pioneering work in television left behind. I'd commend to you, reader, his multi-hour interview with the Television Academy from 1997, from which much of this article is sourced.
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| Tom Goldsmith in the 1997 Television Academy interview. |
My final word on the subject here, in closing, is that Goldsmith and Mann's CRT Amusement Device holds a rather odd place in video game history. It's a sort-of-not-really video game, made by a couple of men who had no association with even the electromechanical arcade/pinball industry, and had zero influence in video game development. Yet, in a strange and roundabout way, the video game industry as a whole is built on the shoulders of Thomas T. Goldsmith Jr.'s life's work, and the work of those around him, like Estle Ray Mann and Allen B. DuMont. CRT TVs and monitors, which these men had a leading hand in pioneering and developing, were used for decades everywhere for gaming - for computer monitors, arcade machines, and the home TV sets you and I grew up playing Super Mario Bros. and The Legend of Zelda on. I still have one back at my parents' house, exclusively for retro gaming, just to get that authentic experience whenever I boot up my Atari 2600 to play Adventure, or the Mega Drive for Sonic the Hedgehog. Whenever I see a CRT TV now, I'm going to be thinking of Thomas Toliver Goldsmith, Jr., grateful for the work he and his colleagues did to pioneer the technology that made all these video games possible.
