I had no internet for the entirety of yesterday. As someone who is terminally online, this caused no small amount of distress. However, it did afford me ample time to ruminate on the changes and progress (or lack thereof) happening with the blog in recent times.
I'm still learning to manage my different content streams, with consistency being my chief goal right now. I solved a content bottleneck with my videos, but that's caused another bottleneck with the blog. Not having regular content is a big no-no for me, and a big no-no for growth - so how to fix this?
The solution on the YouTube side of things was for me to push ahead with weekly uploads of my "Let's Play" series of videos - my "blind" playthroughs of every video game, in chronological order; while the "Chronicles" - my mini-documentary/review of the game, would become desynched with the Let's Plays. Those Chronicle videos take weeks and weeks to edit, and having only one video a month simply won't do.
So, what's the solution for the blog? As I was ruminating on the subject last night, I realised that the solution for the blog is... the exact same thing.
What I mean is, that I can split my articles in two - one for gameplay, one for research. Since I now use my blog articles as the basis for YouTube scripts, the release schedule for them is dependent on how quickly I can get a video edited (which is "not very" at the moment, with my novice editing skills.) But what I can do is provide the gameplay element of my blogs on a more regular basis as a reader's version of the Let's Play series for those of you who prefer to read the blog over watch the videos.
So that's the new plan: a Let's Play article to go along with my Let's Play videos - which will include preliminary scores and tier listings, while the big articles will line up with my Chronicles videos. I know this will change the face of the blog into a more gameplay-forward one, instead of research, but it makes my life a hell of a lot easier when it comes to managing everything, and ensures that neither side gets neglected, as was the case before. It keeps me playing new games, too, which helps keep it fresh and interesting for me as a creator. You'd be getting the gameplay and scores either way - it's just going to happen more often now!
My hope is to have a regular upload schedule of one Let's Play per week (released Saturday AEST), and one Chronicle per month (released last day of the month.) Hopefully I can increase this as I get less shit at editing.
Anyway, there's some catching up to do! Expect three Let's Play articles this week: Draughts, Bouncing Ball, and OXO!
Before we get to Draughts, we're taking a little sidestep into the adjacent world of chess programs. Dietrich Prinz's Mate-in-Two, or Robot Chess, appears in a couple of online databases, so I felt it was worth brief consideration. Gaming-History creatively calls this program Chess-Playing Program. Which is... a true statement. Sort of.
What I mean is that Mate-in-Two isn't a full chess-playing computer program. You couldn't run a full, computerised game of chess on even the newest tech back in 1951 - Alan Turing's Turbochamp experiment proved that. The hulking, room-sized beasts, even of the calibre of Ferranti's Mark 1, just didn't have enough memory to manage all the thousands upon thousands of possible combinations of moves available in Chess - not to mention additional rules like castling and en passant. To make a working Chess program of any form, you'd have to focus on one phase of the game, rather than the whole. Dietrich Prinz realised this, and decided that the most manageable phase to focus on was endgame. Less pieces, less moves to contend with. Specifically, Prinz designed the program to deal with specific chess puzzle scenario where the task is to checkmate within two turns - hence "mate-in-two."
A Prinz-ly Parallel
Prinz himself has a rather interesting story, in some ways paralleling that of Josef Kates, creator of Bertie the Brain. Born on the 29th of March, 1923 in Berlin, Germany, Prinz's family would, like Josef Kates', make their way across the English Channel prior to the onset of the Second World War - Prinz's mother was Jewish. Prior to leaving Germany, he had received quite a prestigious education at the University of Berlin - he got to learn from Albert Einstein! Prinz graduated with a Ph.D. in Physics, and worked for a time with German TV and Radio manufacturer Telefunken, before deciding in 1935 that it wasn't worth hanging around Germany anymore.
Dietrich Gunther Prinz (1923 - 1989)
Britain was a profitable safe haven for Prinz, settling quite nicely into a job for the British General Electric Company (GEC - not to be confused with the American General Electric!) However, this is a case of "second verse, same as the first." Just like Josef Kates, Prinz was interned when war hit Britain, over suspicion of any German (or Austrian) refugees being potential spies. Also like Kates, Prinz was booted out to Canada!
Unlike Kates, however, Prinz would return to England after the war's end. He started up north in Leeds, before being picked up by Ferranti in 1947 for a computer project at their Manchester site. That project would become the Ferranti Mark 1 - a landmark computer that I touched briefly on in the Nimrod article. The Mark 1 was the first commercially available digital computer and, for us gamers, is the oldest computer with extant games and software. It's only taken four years to transition from purpose-built hardware made to play a single game, to the more familiar model of a single computer able to have multiple games programmed and stored on it.
Unfortunately, Prinz's Mate-in-Two is not part of the suite of extant software - hence why this is a Gaiden article. Prinz got the idea to look into chess programming from a couple of sources - one, a research paper on the subject, and seminars he'd been attending on programming run by none other than Alan Turing himself. However, like I said at the beginning of the article, the Ferranti Mark 1 wasn't capable of running a full chess program, so Prinz focused his efforts on endgame situations, hence the commonly given "Mate-in-Two" title for the program. He began work on this program in 1949.
However, Prinz's program would not be completed before he got involved in a little side project that will be familiar to us - Nimrod. It shouldn't come as a surprise that a man of Prinz's calibre, working at Ferranti during Nimrod's development, would be left out. How much of the design process he was involved in is unknown, but his German heritage proved incredibly serendipitous when Nimrod made its way over to Germany for the Berlin Industrial Fair. Prinz was able to teach German students and dignitaries on the operation of Nimrod. According to Raymond Stuart-Williams, Prinz also had to invent an entirely new German computing vocabulary to do so!
More than Chess Problems
With that little Nimrod side quest out of the way, Prinz set about completing his chess program. Remember the timeline here - Nimrod was in Berlin in October, 1951, and Prinz had Mate-in-Two working by November the same year. From what I've read online, both the process of inputting a game state for the program to solve, and the computer solving the problem were exceptionally slow and arduous. The piece placements were provided to the computer on punched tape, which is then stored on the computer's magnetic tape memory, which the computer then converts to digital memory.... and only then it can start solving the problem.
The first problem given to Mate-in-Two took around 15 minutes to solve. It tested 450 moves - 100 of which ended up being illegal moves - and ran a self-check diagnostic every time a move was completed (this tested to see if the king was in check or not), which meant that each of those 450 moves took roughly 2 seconds to execute. The eventual solution was literally moving a rook two squares to the left. It took me about 10 seconds to figure out the winning move after I saw the layout - so the computer's not exactly winning any awards for quick thinking, is it? The technology will catch up, eventually...
This is the first problem Mate-in-Two solved. Can you figure it out in under 15 minutes?
Summarising Mate-in-Two's legacy is a tricky task. Much of that is because I'm not sure if it has one. One source reports that Mate-in-Two was never used again after its first outing, due to more pressing matters computers were needed to address. There seemed to be some awareness of the program by contemporaries, as Prinz published an article about the program in a journal titled Research in 1952. Not a terribly descriptive title for a journal, and so I wasn't able to find said article in the archives. That article was reprinted in a 1988 book called Computer Chess Compendium, however, but I'm not shelling out $30 for an ebook copy of that, sorry-not-sorry.
Prinz's article was responded to in some manner in a 1953 book titled Faster Than Thought, by B. V. Bowden (the title is inspired by Nimrod). The author is apparently quite harsh in his assessment of Mate-in-Two, citing several improvements that could've been made to the code, and that there wasn't much of a future in computer chess if this was the only programming means available. But the first of anything is hardly ever going to be a success, right? The foundation's been laid for computer chess, at the very least.
And, just so we all know for future reference - I won't be covering every chess program ever made. I think that would be a fruitless exercise, and would be a distraction from my chief goal. I'll consider making mention of significant ones to video game development in the future - that's why we've been discussing Mate-in-Two to begin with. It's one of the first known examples of a "game" program developed for a programmable, digital storage computer, even predating the functional debut of Christopher Strachey's Draughts on the same system.
Developer(s): John Makepeace Bennett, Raymond Stuart-Williams
Publisher(s): Ferranti
You think I was joking when I said last article that video games had become an international sensation by 1950? Well, Nimrod here sees us jumping across the Atlantic Ocean to Great Britain to a game designed by an Australian (you beauty!), built in England, and shown off in two separate countries! How's that for international?
Nimrod, also happens to be the first of many, many, many computerised versions of the game of Nim we'll be seeing over the formative decades of video game history. Yes, I did just say decades - that wasn't a typo. As a simple and wholly predictable mathematical logic game, Nim was extremely popular with programmers and computer scientists.
Aussie, Aussie, Aussie!
It's a personal point of national pride for me, seeing an Australian-designed game appear so early on in the history of video games. Sure, we have top-tier pedigree nowadays (Hollow Knight, anyone?), but seeing that Aussie involvement in gaming can be traced back to the very formative years of the medium does bring me a little joy.
John Makepeace Bennett (OA) was born in Warwick, Queensland on the 31st of July, 1921. Little was recorded concerning his formative years in this regional town - we know, at the very least, that he wasn't educated there. Rather, his education took place at a Gold Coast boys-only boarding school known as The Southport School. Bennett chose to pursue higher education at the University of Queensland, graduating with a Bachelor of Civil Engineering - a choice of convenience inspired by his older brother, Ron, who previously completed the course. John had free access to all of his brother's study notes - no doubt making the course rather easy for him.
John M. Bennett (OA, 1921 - 2010)
Bennett's tertiary study years also happened to coincide with the outbreak of World War Two. Once Bennett had that shiny piece of paper in his hand, it was off to war with him. Fortunately, his smarts kept him off the battlefield, and he was instead stationed with a RAAF (Royal Australian Air Force) radar unit on the Wessel Islands - a group of uninhabited islands at the very tip-top of the Northern Territory, almost a stone's throw across the ocean from Papua New Guinea. Once the war was over, Bennett returned to education, studying electronics and mechanical engineering, and mathematics.
1947 would be the year to define the course of Bennett's life work. It would see him leave his homeland for the computer labs of England, where he would work on some of the most significant early computers, which would, in course, lead him to design Nimrod. While working in Brisbane, Bennett would hear a radio talk concerning one of those new-fangled computers being designed over in the United Kingdom. This computer was the Pilot ACE - the scaled-back version of the ACE computer designed by Alan Turing in 1945. Inspired to bring the technology back Down Under, Bennett left for Cambridge University. As a side, Turing and Bennett did indeed cross paths - in 1950, when both were working for Ferranti.
At Cambridge, Bennett would not only complete his PhD, but also assist in the development of several important early computers - we'll talk about those more fully with the next few upcoming games. As a research assistant under Sir Maurice Vincent Wilkes, Bennett would be part of the team that built the Electronic Delay Storage Automatic Calculator - EDSAC for short. EDSAC was one of the very first stored-program computers, and is significant for us with regards to video games, as we have not only evidence of several games programmed for it, but one of the contenders for the title of "first video game," A.S. Douglas' OXO, is still playable today (though only in simulated form.)
EDSAC. Looks more like a library than a computer.
While completing his PhD, Bennett was approached by the electronic engineering firm, Ferranti. Ferranti might be a familiar name to those of you who read the Bertie the Brain article, as the company that provided Josef Kates' University of Toronto with the FERUT computer. Ferranti wanted Bennett's specialty knowledge for a project being undertaken for the University of Manchester. Ferranti had, at this stage, already completed their Ferranti Mark 1 computer - the successor to the earlier Manchester Mark 1 - but further upgrades were required. Bennett's new-found familiarity with computers made him a valuable asset for Ferranti, and he accepted a role on the project in 1950. He would develop the instruction set for the upgraded Ferranti Mark 1, commonly known as the Ferranti Mark 1 Star (usually written as Mark 1).
Ferranti Mark 1* in operation.
This is where he would work alongside both Alan Turing, and the parents of Tim Berners-Lee, future inventor of the World Wide Web. The web of connections grows exponentially the further I dig in! Bennett would also meet his wife, Mary Elkington, while working on the Ferranti Mark 1 in 1952. Bennett had already done much in his brief career, but he was yet to lead a project. That opportunity came in 1950.
Faster Than Thought
In the late 1940s, plans were commenced for creating a celebration of British ingenuity. This was the Festival of Britain, and it was due to commence in the summer of 1951. A year prior, the event organisers approached Ferranti - who were at the time one of the leading computer manufacturers in the world - asking if they would be able to create a full-scale computer display for the Festival. Ferranti agreed, but as the deadline approached, it became obvious to all at the company that the promised device would not be completed in time. Ferranti made the unfortunate news known to Festival authorities on the 30th of November, 1950.
Enter John Bennett with a solution.
Bennett proposed that something could still be done for the Festival. Something of a smaller scale, but could still display the basics of computer science and programming. He suggested that they create a computer that could play the game of Nim. He worked through December of 1950 to develop the design for this gaming computer, and it was presented to both Ferranti and Festival authorities. They both approved it, and work commenced in January, 1951. Progress was rapid, with construction undertaken by a team of nine, spearheaded by Ferranti engineer Raymond Stuart-Williams, and the computer, named after the Biblical character Nimrod, was completed in April of the same year. Just in time for the Festival!
A poster for the Festival of Britain.
Nimrod was transported from Manchester to London for the Festival over April, and the four ton, nine-foot tall beast was fully constructed and working on the 1st of May. The Festival commenced on the 4th of May, with Nimrod front-and-centre in the science section of the South Kensington location. Advertised as an "electronic brain" and "faster than thought," the Nimrod display captivated its audiences for the entire five-month run of its exhibition at the Festival. It's reported that Bennett's colleague, Alan Turing, tried his hand at beating Nimrod. It did not succeed in having a flawless performance, with a few minor malfunctions occurring during the months, which were easily resolved. Although, Bennett recounts, its reception was not quite as intended,
"The machine was a great success but not quite in the way intended, as I discovered during my time as spruiker on the Festival stand. Most of the public were quite happy to gawk at the flashing lights and be impressed. A few took an interest in the algorithm and even persisted to the point of beating the machine at the game. Only occasionally did we receive any evidence that our real message about the basics of programming had been understood."
(The source for this quote can be found here. This website is chock full of Nimrod facts and trivia, and is well worth your perusing.)
Nimrod, in the flesh.
Curiously, this reception mirrors the reception of Bertie the Brain in Canada a year prior. There's quite a few parallels between Nimrod and Bertie, as a matter of fact:
Both games were designed by one man, with countries of birth foreign to the country their games were built in (Josef Kates was Austrian; John Bennett was Australian - don't get the two mixed up!)
Both games were designed specifically for a national exhibition.
Both games had a primary purpose other than entertainment.
The reception of both games ran contrary to their intended purpose.
UnlikeBertie, however, Nimrod was not immediately dismantled after the conclusion of the exhibition. That was the intention, but Nimrod was offered a second life. In the last week of the London exhibition, a suggestion was made to the Nimrod team by the Board of Trade to take Nimrod for a Continental excursion to visit the old enemy, Germany. The Berlin Industrial Fair was due to begin on the 6th of October, and there was a dedicated United Kingdom exhibit planned for it. It took a bit of convincing, but the Nimrod team eventually agreed, upon realising that it would be quite easy to accomplish the task of dismantling and flying the machine overseas in the matter of a fortnight - all they had to do was work 24 hours a day, and work twice as quickly! How hard could that be?
An artist's rendition of Nimrod.
I won't recount the full tale of Nimrod's trek to Berlin, but needless to say it was quite the arduous journey! There's an entire article available to read online, written by Raymond Stuart-Williams himself, where he recounts the full adventure with typical dry, British wit. The liner notes version would be that the whole saga was a comedy of errors, featuring a plane too small to store all of Nimrod, another dodgy plane with a flat tire and doors that wouldn't close, and having to convince Dutch customs officials that Nimrod was not actually an atom bomb! Maybe the instinct to refuse initially had merit, after all...
Needless to say, Nimrod did somehow manage to arrive at its destination unscathed. Stuart-Williams recounts that the team, plus a few German engineers, had Nimrod up and running within 28 hours of arrival. The German audiences were just as - if not more - fascinated by Nimrod, and several dignitaries tried their hand at beating Nimrod - and failing! Word of the machine even made it over the Berlin Wall, with one university attempting to build a replica.
Nimrod in Germany.
Once the German exhibition concluded, it was time for Nimrod to return home for a well-earned retirement. There's some misinformation floating around the internet suggesting that Nimrod also made an appearance in Canada, but this is flatly debunked by Stuart-Williams' article. He states that, once Nimrod was returned to Britain in November, 1951, having completed its task, it was promptly dismantled.
[Ed. This is incorrect. Commentor Alex Smith directed me to evidence that Nimrod did indeed make an appearance in Canada in March of 1952. You can read the evidence here and here.]
A Computer of Renown
I'm actually quite pleased to say that Nimrod possess a legacy and influence, unlike the first two games of our chronology. Although, it's only tangential influence, rather than direct. But it's better than nothing!
As formerly noted, John Bennett worked on development of EDSAC prior to designing Nimrod. Very soon, people are going to start making games for EDSAC - most notably Sandy Douglas' OXO in 1952, which might be the first "true" video game, under some definitions. The other contender for that title, Christopher Strachey's Draughts, also has a potential, yet more speculative connection due to Bennett's involvement with Ferranti during the Ferranti Mark 1 and Mark 1*development - the former of those being the platform Strachey would gethisDraughts program fully functional on. There's a strong possibility that Bennett and Strachey crossed paths in 1952 while both were working on their separate projects at the University of Manchester.
This gives us a substantial update to the Video Game Family Tree, as we'll see below. Aside from the Air Defense Simulation connections, we actually have some real connections to make!
The upgraded family tree as it stands at 1951-52.
As for John Bennett post-Nimrod, he would make his way back Down Under in early 1956 to become an Aussie computer pioneer. He took up a role with the University of Sydney's Department of Physics, where he would be in charge of overseeing the university's brand new supercomputer - the SILLIAC, named after the American ILLIAC. This was regarded as one of the most powerful computers in the world in the mid-1950s, and Bennett would - quite literally - write the book on it. He also developed Australia's first computer programming course during this time. Bennett would remain involved in computer science for his entire professional life, chairing several state-based computer societies, and he eventually became the inaugural president of the Australian Computer Society in 1966.
In 1983, Bennett was made an Officer of the Order of Australia for his contributions to computer science and technology, and retired in 1987. He was also awarded the Centenary Medal during Australia's centennial celebrations in 2001 for his services. After enjoying a long retirement, whilst still being regularly tuned into the latest developments in computer science, John Makepeace Bennett passed away on the 9th of December, 2010, at the ripe old age of 89.
John Makepeace Bennett.
Personally, I've quite enjoyed learning about this great Australian, whom I was totally unaware of prior to writing this article. Part of the joy of doing this blog is discovering the stories of great people, who achieved great things that still have an impact on us today, who would otherwise be forgotten about.
Gameplay
Let's finally talk about how Nimrod actually plays. Nimrod plays your standard, garden-variety game of Nim. What Nim is warrants some explanation here, as it's technically the first time we see Nim appear in the chronology.
Before diving in, it's worth mentioning that you can play Nimrod today! There's an online simulator available on a Nimrod fan site here. This is a "stripped back" version of the author's full simulator, which he boasts is for the "most modern operating system", HAIKU/BeOS. I have my own thoughts on this decision, which I'll keep to myself to avoid offense. I'm thankful that we've been given a publicly available, browser-based version of this simulator, at least.
The Nimrod simulator.
Nim is an ancient game centred around object removal. There are multiple variations of the game, but the core gameplay element that does not change is that two players take turns removing objects from one or multiple piles of objects,. with the objective being to either be the player to take the last object, or to force your opponent into taking the last object.
Nimrod was designed with a fairly standardised ruleset for Nim, in which there are four piles of objects, represented by the computer as four rows of seven lights - seven being the maximum number of objects allowed in each pile. Nimrod allows the player to choose how many objects are in each pile, though the standard, 4-pile setup is 7, 5, 3 and 1. The player would setup the game by pushing a lever on the computer to put the game into "setup" mode. The number of objects they'd like in each pile could be selected by pressing a button above one of the lights in each row, corresponding to the number of objects in each pile, ascending from left to right - to have zero objects in a pile, you'd push the leftmost button, to have a full seven, you'd press the rightmost button.
Look at the pretty colours!
The player could also use other levers to adjust various game settings. There's not a whole lot of variation with Nim, but Nimrod only includes the bare essential settings - whether the winner is the one who takes the object (called "simple" mode by the game), or the one who forces their opponent to take the last object (called "reverse".) This setting was also changed by a lever, as was whether the player or computer played the first move. Quick hint: if you want to win Nim, always go second! Nimrod plays a perfect game, meaning the player can never win going first.
Once the player's preferred settings were selected, they'd then push the "setup" lever back down into the "play" position to begin the game. For the player to remove objects, simply press one of the other buttons above a light, and all the objects to the right of that button will be taken. We're so far back in computing history here that the computer can't automatically make its moves - the player has to press a button to get the computer to make its move! (If you think this is complicated, wait until you see Strachey's Draughts.)
My playing experience of the simulator was confusing initially, fumbling about with the controls until I figured out how it all worked. This, thankfully, didn't take too long, and I was able to beat the computer on a couple of occasions once I remembered how the logic behind Nim worked. I show you how to beat Nimrod in the video at the top of the article, and, to save me the explanation, there's an article here explaining the binary logic behind Nim. There's not really a whole lot to say about the game once the novelty of it being a computer game from 1951 wears off. It's just computer Nim, like any other computer Nim I've played before.
This was a winning setup for me.
On that note, I think it's a good time to move onto the scores.
Scores
Time Played: 25 minutes
I had to re-record my Let's Play, as OBS ate half of my voice on the original recording due to my filter settings.
Difficulty: 5 (Moderate)
Difficulty is tricky to judge with Nimrod, and by extension all other early Nim variants. The computer plays perfectly, meaning that it's either impossible to beat on certain settings. On the flipside, one can also take advantage of the settings and computer (provided you know how Nim's logic works) to also win infinitely.
Gameplay: 2 Nim is inherently a simple and not overly interesting logic game to me. These early computerised versions tend to be frustrating in that they're either impossible to beat due to the computer being programmed to play perfectly, or are infinitely beatable with the right settings, once you know the logic behind the game. The lack of variation in the computer's competency makes the game far less compelling than it could be.
At base, I give Nim in all its variants 1 point for being an actual game. Nimrod gets another point for the variety of game settings available, which is impressive for such an early computer game.
Controls: 5 Nimrod actually has a fairly simple control scheme, despite the appearance of complexity. Game settings are changed with the use of levers. Each light in the four rows, representing an object, has a button attached to it. You setup the game by pressing the button lining up with the number of objects you'd like in that pile, with the rightmost button being the most at 7. If you want no objects in a pile, you'd press the leftmost button. Actually... the more I try to explain it, the more complicated it actually seems...
Initially, playing the simulator, I did get a little confused on taking away objects at first. The game only takes away the objects to the right of whatever button you press, but not the object below the pressed button. The computer does not automatically make its moves, either - the player has to press another button to have the computer make a move.
Sound: N/A
Visual: 2
A score for visuals is quite odd to determine for Nimrod, as it doesn't exactly have a "traditional" display. The visual component is represented by individual lightbulbs - whether this counts as a true video display or not is up for debate. It's at least more interesting to look at than the average text-based game, so I'll give it a 2.
Story: N/A
Functionality: 4
This score is purely based on the first-hand accounts from Bennett and Stuart-Williams concerning Nimrod's actual performance. A few malfunctions occurred, but they were only minor, and resolved quickly.
Accessibility: 3
I mean... if you lived in London in 1951, and were able to attend the exhibition, then sure - it's accessible.
As a game, it's relatively easy to understand, as the Nim concept is simple to grasp. Although, the game's display appears overwhelming at first with all its lights, buttons and switches, which is where it loses a couple of points for me.
Fun Factor: 1
Not particularly exciting once the novelty wears off; it's just like every other game of Nim I've ever played, just with more involved controls.
Overall: 17
Proto-video games aren't going to score very well by their nature. 17 (weighted to 21.25) is a pretty terrible score, however. Not terrible enough to land Nimrod in the F-tier - but only just. One also has to keep in mind that games like Nimrod were not designed with a modern game dev's mindset - nobody knew what video game design principles were back in 1951. Nimrod was a showcase for a company's technical prowess, and its design reflects as much. I find it fascinating how much Nimrod parallels with Bertie the Brain, despite the two games being created on opposite sides of the world, and with no contact.
The second usual contender for the title of "first video game" (sorry Air Defense Simulation) sees us taking a brief trip across the northern border from where the Cathode-Ray Tube Amusement Device was made - to Canada. Two games, two countries already! Video games have been hardly invented yet, but are already becoming an international phenomenon!
During the course of research for this article, I figured out a suitable name for these earliest "is-it-a-video-game-or-not" devices: proto-video games. I haven't heard anybody use a term like that for these earliest digital games, and I think it's a suitable designation for these games that are edge cases like Bertie the Brain and the Cathode-Ray Tube Amusement Device, not neatly fitting into any other pre-established categories.
I also need to point out upfront that this is likely one of the few exceptions to my new approach to scoring everything. Since there is no means to play or experience the game, I obviously can't score it. Just giving a heads up in case you end up wondering why there's no score section at the end of this article. I am aware of a couple of "homage" programs floating around online, but they're not exactly authentic or accurate. On that basis, I'm content to leave this one out of the tier list.
Bertie's Brain
The second of these proto-video games was designed solely by one man - Josef Kates. An Austrian of Jewish descent, born on the 5th of May, 1921, in Vienna. His parents were grocers and, like so many others, were forced to flee the persecution occurring their native land at the hands of the Third Reich. First to Italy, and then to England when he was only 18 years of age in 1939. For a short while, he found respite there, working as an optical apprentice. That respite came to and end when war came to Britain.
Josef Kates.
Initially he volunteered for the British army but, in 1940, Britain interned Continental refugees under the suspicion that they might be working for the enemy. A plan was hatched with Commonwealth members Canada and Australia to transfer these refugees abroad. Kates ended up in Canada, where he would remain for the rest of his life. But now, in Canada, Kates was no longer a free refugee - he was a prisoner of war.
Kates found himself living in an internment camp for two years, where he worked various odd jobs, and was also offered the opportunity to complete a high school diploma through Montreal's McGill University. Back in Vienna, Kates performed rather poorly as a student, but when this opportunity presented itself, he pushed himself to excel in his studies. The work paid off, as when exam time came, he was the best performing student in the entire province of Quebec!
Come 1942, Canadian officials realised that Kates and his fellow prisoners weren't actually on the side of the Germans, and thus released them from internment. Kates had several opportunities presented to him to work and study - he was offered a sponsorship at the University of Toronto, which he did not take up until 1944. In the interim two years, Kates returned to a familiar vocation - optics, taking up a job at Imperial Optical as an optical technician to support Canada's war effort.
When it came time to take up that university sponsorship, Kates majored in mathematics and physics over a course of four years, while also working full-time in a new field - electronics. He was working for a company called Rogers Majestic, which went by many names over the years - eventually it was merged into the Dutch mega-corporation, Philips. Originally given the incredibly direct, matter-of-fact name of Standard Radio Manufacturing Corporation, Rogers Majestic - founded by Edward Rogers in 1925 - specialised in vacuum tube manufacturing, specifically for what was marketed as "battery-less" radios. Kates' time working here would give him the necessary knowledge and experience needed for his future inventions, like Bertie the Brain.
When Kates' study was completed, the University of Toronto offered him a job. They had just recently created a brand new computing centre, and were looking for capable individuals to work there. Kates was obviously a familiar character to the university - one of his professors played a leading hand in forming the new computing centre - and so they offered him a position. According to Kates, the pay was shockingly poor, but this new field of computing excited him, so he took the job anyway.
The first project Kates and his team worked on was constructing the university's first computer - the University of Toronto Electronic Computer (UTEC). The specs on this thing were sure... well, they were specs, I guess. I think a modern toaster would likely have more memory space than UTEC did... This "pilot" computer, as Kates describes it, was declared fully operational on the 1st of October, 1951. Unfortunately, it was a short-lived machine, as it was replaced a year later by a Ferranti built computer nicknamed FERUT, which was imported as a half-built Manchester Mark I (the predecessor of the machine Christopher Strachey's Draughts game was fully completed on). The arrival of FERUT also killed plans to create a larger version of UTEC.
UTEC in action. This is what a computer looked like circa 1949-50. Kates the middle of the three men.
There's a fascinating piece of information Josef Kates gives in a 1992 interview when talking about UTEC. It was such a limited machine, that, according to Kates, "The only thing we programmed for it was games [emphasis added.]"
Games!
Kates doesn't go into much detail about what games were programmed for UTEC, but he does mention a Nim game being created. I find this detail simply fascinating - it means more computer game activity was happening in the 1940s and 50s than first thought. Also curious is that there was more interaction between this generation of computer scientists than I initially thought. Engineers from both the EDSAC project at Cambridge and the Pilot ACE project at the National Physical Laboratory visited Toronto to see UTEC. Both computers relevant to the history of video games, too, with OXO (EDSAC) and Draughts (Pilot ACE) being prominent early computer games written for the systems. Those games' authors wouldn't have been part of the groups to visit UTEC during its development, however. Douglas and Strachey were comparative latecomers to EDSAC and Pilot ACE, respectively.
During this extremely arduous process of developing UTEC, Kates formed in his mind one way of improving the building of computers in the future. The infrastructure needed to build a computer was excessive at this time, especially the required amount of vacuum tubes. The circuit constructed for basic addition required twelve vacuum tubes. For UTEC, 1 + 1 = 12. Kates thought it absurd - there had to be a better way. He conceived of an invention he named the additron tube. In layman's terms, this tube was conceptualised to compress the job those twelve vacuum tubes did into a single tube. Sounds like a great idea, right? Kates thought so, too, and wanted to showcase the tubes in some big way. His mind must have still been stuck on those games he was programming on UTEC, because his idea to showcase his new invention was to create a game with the additron tube.
Bertie
Kates was prompted to come up with the idea for creating a game using his additron tube invention by the man he enlisted to construct a few tester tubes - Ted Van Dyke. Dyke knew that there needed to be some form of public advertisement for the new invention. Kates knew that there was a National Exhibition up-coming in 1950, and thus the idea was conceived to create a game for the Canadian National Exhibition to advertise the additron tube. We shall see this sort of thing - games being produced for a purpose other than entertainment - becoming a recurrent motif in early video game history. Somewhat ironic that the first proto-video game (CRT Amusement Device) was actually designed purely for entertainment.
Progress on the game was rapid out of necessity. Kates reported to have completed the design of Bertie the Brain in only half an hour! The concept of the game was rather simple - create a computer that can play Tic-Tac-Toe against a human opponent. Kates also wanted the competency of the computer opponent to be adjustable; in modern terms - difficulty modes. This is quite remarkable, as we're seeing a foundational aspect of video game design present in a video game (arguably the first) designed in 1950. Keep in mind that we're still two decades away from the birth of the arcade industry, and those games didn't initially have much in the way of difficulty modes.
Kates' previous work experience provided quite helpful in the construction of Bertie the Brain, as he was able to construct the machine at Rogers Majestic in Leaside, with the company - now merged into Philips - providing assistance in the form of Harry Stein, who completed the majority of the work alongside Kates. Kates and co. powered through the process, and had Bertie the Brain ready for the National Exhibition.
Quite the looker, Bernie was.
On the 25th of August, 1950, the annual Canadian National Exhibition began. Front and centre was a strange, giant machine with the name "Bertie the Brain" plastered on the overhanging front panel at the top of a device over twice the height of most passers-by. Kates reports that Bertie routinely attracted substantial crowds across the CNE's two-week run time. There's one famous anecdote concerning Danny Kaye, a celebrity comedian in those days who was headlining a vaudeville performance at the Exhibition. According to Kates' Philips convinced him to come and try his hand against Bertie. Kates cranked up the Brain to max difficulty, and Kaye lost round after round - I'm sure much to his dismay. Eventually Kates relented, and Kaye was able to win a round.
The now-iconic photo of Danny Kaye having beaten Bertie the Brain.
Word of this spectacular, computerised mind even spread across the southern border. The Washington Post reported on it in a section summarising the entire Exhibition in their 9th of September, 1950 edition. Bertie the Brain takes out another first - the first video game to make international headlines! Well, that's if you'd call from Canada to the United States "international." It technically is, but it doesn't really feel like it, does it?
Bertie performed exceptionally well, by all reports. It was able to run for a solid 12 hours straight across every day of the Exhibition. I'm sure that seemed quite miraculous to Kates, considering the former UTEC he developed initially struggled to function for 15 minutes at a time! They did manage to improve that figure to 2-3 hours - still a far cry from 12 hours.
Kates, likely adjusting the difficulty of Bernie at the rear of the machine.
What didn't perform exceptionally were additron tube sales. Bertie attracted more interest for its novelty, rather than the intended publicisation of Kates' invention. In a rather cruel twist of fate, the semiconductor industry was just getting up and rolling, making the additron tube project obsolete before it had a chance to sprout wings. The tubes were never put into production, and poor old Bertie, having failed at his primary goal, was disassembled after the conclusion of the Exhibition, never to be seen again.
And, just like the Cathode-Ray Tube Amusement Device before it... that was it for Bertie the Brain. Everyone seemed to forget about it rather quickly - Kates included. Between 1992 and 1951, knowledge of Bertie appeared to be completely lost - also much like the CRT Amusement Device. It's a common reality that knowledge of any games prior to Tennis for Two or Spacewar! only seems to resurface in the internet age. For this reason, I won't bring up my Video Game Family Tree here, as Bertie's another that sits as an island without influence on later games (another common reality.)
Kates later admitted regretting not preserving Bertie, lamenting that the speed through which he was progressing through multiple simultaneous projects provided no time for a thought of preservation. And Kates did achieve quite a lot post-Bertie, proving to be a highly influential man in many improvements to Canadian infrastructure. In fact, such was his contribution that, on 16th of September, 2011 the he was made a member of the Order of Canada in recognition of his work. Some brief highlights of his work include the designing of both Toronto's and the world's first automated traffic control system in 1954, and forming a consulting company that improved ship flow through the Welland Canal in Ontario. Kates died in Toronto on the 16th of June, 2018, living to the ripe old age of 97. There's something about this generation and living long - remember that Tom Goldsmith made it to 99!
Is it Really a Video Game?
People like to say funny things about these early proto-video games. One article called this "the world's first arcade game;" many others citing Bertie the Brain as "the first video game." I find a few problems with these attributions. For one, it's not the first arcade game, as arcades, even with electronic amusements (like Nimatron from ten years prior), had existed long before Bertie. Secondly, if we accept the CRT Amusement Device as a video game, Bertie is dethroned from the latter attribution.
That being said, whether or not Bertie the Brain is even a video game is a topic of debate. To once again refer to Stuart Brown (Ahoy) on the subject, he rules out Bertie because it lacks a proper video display. The "screen" used consists of lightbulbs and relays - not a true video display. It has more in common with LCD games in that regard. Interactive, yes, but the player wasn't manipulating images in real time on a CRT-or-otherwise display. The CRT Amusement Device has more claim to being a video game in this regard. This is why I think providing a median category like proto-video games is helpful - for games like Bertie that don't technically fit the definition, but have enough video game elements for some to argue the case that they do.
Speaking of those elements, it's worthwhile laying them out neatly, as Bertie the Brain does distinguish itself as a game of many firsts - some of these are mainstay mechanics in video games to this day, to boot! If we were to define Bertie as a video game, these are the firsts it claims:
The first computer-based game to be displayed and played by the public. Yes, it wasn't a commercial product, and no, it wasn't intended for entertainment. Yet it drew great crowds and the Canadian National Exhibition, which one could almost view as a foretaste of the craze Pong would generate two decades later.
The first video game with set, selectable difficulty modes. These were controlled by Kates himself, but from his report, there were quite a few levels of difficulty, running the full range of easy enough for a child to win, to downright impossible. It's a prefiguring of the dipswitch system arcade games would run with, and other difficulty selection systems, like the Atari 2600's difficulty switches. Yes, the CRT Amusement Device has a form of player controlled difficulty, but it wasn't set difficulty levels like with Bertie.
The first video game with an artificial intelligence. This is the first example of a running game with a solo player competing against a computer opponent. It ties in with the difficulty modes, as well, as the difficulty mode determines the competency of the AI. Going into the 70s, seeing both an AI opponent and customisable difficulty in a single video game is exceedingly rare; it's usually one or the other. Funny to think about, seeing as this is something so taken for granted in video game design now.
I can see why some make the call on Bertie the Brain being the "first arcade video game." It does prefigure arcade cabinets in its visual design to some extent, despite being utterly massive in comparison to the average arcade cabinet. It's also an entirely custom piece of hardware, unlike the comparatively miniscule, and eventually interchangeable PCBs arcade games would be housed on.
If I wanted to be extremely pedantic about definitions, I could grant Bertie the Brain the title of "first computer game." It technically is the first fully realised computer game. Alan Turing's Turbochamp existed in theory years prior, but that was never actually realised as a computer program. But this all depends on whether one wants to delineate "computer" and "video" games. Personally, I don't see a difference - computer games are just video games played on a computer, as opposed to a TV or other device.
So, what do I personally think? Is Bertie a video game? I'm more confident in my conclusion here than with the CRT Amusement Device - I lean more to the side that says Bertie is not a video game. While there are several video game design elements Bertie appears to have pioneered, the absence of a true video signal display lands it far more in the territory of an electro-mechanical - or simply electronic - game. Nevertheless, Bertie the Brain will forever retain a rather interesting place in the early history of video/computer game experiments.
We're already off into the weeds with a gaiden article post-reboot!
Surprisingly, we're not done with the 1940s yet. This was the other potential starting point for the video game chronology, as this is the earliest game listed by MobyGames; it doesn't include the Cathode-Ray Tube Amusement Device in its database. The irony in that is that neither of my other databases include Air Defense Simulation, plus I consider it to be far less of a video game than the CRT Amusement Device. I'm not sure I'd even call it a "proto-video game," to be perfectly honest with you. Yes, I'm spoiling it from the beginning here that I don't consider this a video game, hence why I'm considering this a gaiden article (plus the fact that this program can't be played...) I even considered not including it for the above reasons.
That being said, Air Defense Simulation is interesting in the sense that it represents the beginning of an alternative track in the history of video games that will eventually converge with the main track some decades later, meaning that it's worth discussing - even if there's not a whole lot to talk about when it comes to the actual "game" itself.
That alternative track begins with the program's intent. Unlike the CRT Amusement Device, which was intended, according to its patent, for purely entertainment purposes, Air Defense Simulation has a far more practical purpose. I'll briefly note here that there's very limited information available concerning ADS (unsurprising, considering it's a military project), but we at least have an idea of what it was and how it was used. For one, it was developed by the military for military training purposes.
With the accelerated development of computers and computer science through the Second World War came an increased interest post-war in the uses of computers in a wide variety of fields - military operations being one of the most pressing given the hell the world went through over the decade prior to 1948. This necessity required there to be specialist organisations dedicated to computer research for military operations. One of the first of these organisations to arise was the Operations Research Office, a civilian-based military research organisation founded in 1948 by the United States Army. It operated out of the Johns Hopkins University, founded in 1876 in Baltimore, Maryland. JHU itself has a rather interesting history, being a university founded out of a posthumous philanthropic donation to the city of Baltimore by Quaker businessman Johns Hopkins. It runs based on more of a European model of university, known as a "Research University," making it an ideal candidate for the sort of operations research the military was interested in conducting.
That research evidently included exploring the use of computers in strategic operations and training simulations. One of the ORO's first projects appeared to be our titular Air Defense Simulation. According to MobyGames, the purpose of the ADS was to help speed up existing wargame simulations by having all the mathematical calculations run through the computer ADS ran on. So, in that sense, it's really not a video game at all, but just a computational aid for pre-existing wargames. Apparently other elements were implemented in the program, enemy targets and missiles, which were all displayed on a three-dimensional grid. Sounds a little more game-like, but the majority of the simulation appeared to still be done with pen and paper. Unfortunately there are no photos of the program in action, so what this actually looks like in practice is impossible to discern.
What's also somewhat difficult to discern is what computer the bloody thing ran on. The majority of online sources suggest it ran on the UNIVAC - likely the UNIVAC I, if those sources are to be believed. One small problem with that, however: the UNIVAC wasn't developed fully until 1951. We're still in 1948, so that doesn't work (unless they had access to a very early prototype.) Always check your dates, folks. One possibility it that ADS was ported over to the UNIVAC I after it finished development, but that still doesn't solve the conundrum of what hardware ADS started off on.
NASA's REAC 100. It's a big unit.
MobyGames once again provides an answer for us. It suggests that ADS may have run on a Reeves Electronic Analog Computer (REAC) initially. The Reeves Instrument Corporation was a computer and radar manufacturer that worked in tandem with the United States military - especially the US Navy - for much of its existence. In the late 1940s, they developed the REAC, one of the first electronic analog computers for public commercial sale. According to Wikipedia, there was over sixty of these office-sized beasts installed in various institutions across the United States - including NASA. ORO would've had the REAC 100, the very first model of the computer. There wasn't exactly a lot of choice in 1948 when it came to commercially produced whole computers, so I think it's a fairly safe bet to say that the REAC 100 was the computer Air Defense Simulation was designed to run on.
REAC even had a brochure. Buy one today!
And that's where the trail of information runs cold, unfortunately. We know that ADS was actually used by the military, so it's got a one-up on the CRT Amusement Device in that respect. But other than that, how it performed, who was involved in the development, etc... no idea. I wouldn't be surprised if that information existed in some classified or confidential form.
What is somewhat surprising, on the other hand, is that Air Defense Simulation doesn't exist as an island (another one-up on the CRT Amusement Device!) ADS's existence led to the development of the Carmonette series of wargames, beginning in 1953. The Carmonette wargame series continued into the 1970s, with the fourth installment coming in 1970. It could possibly be argued then, that ADS led to the development of the first ever video game series - if you wanted to count Carmonette as such.
Regardless, it gives me a good excuse to pull out one of the new additions to OGC that I've been working on: the video game family tree!
CRT Amusement Device sits atop, all on its lonesome.
This has been an idea floating around in my head since the start of the blog - to create a visual representation of the chronology of video games as a supplement to the blog. Naturally this tree will expand into an utter behemoth once the industry begins proper 1971-onward. Obviously I wouldn't include the entirething when I need to pull it out. Just the relevant snippets.
I suppose we could also consider ADS as somewhat of a nascent starting point for the Wargame genre that finds a real home starting on the first generation of microcomputers. Not a start proper, seeing as I don't consider ADS a video game, but we can see from it that the idea for computer wargames was present from almost the very beginning of game development. I discovered the term "proto-wargame" from The Wargaming Scribe, and I think that's potentially an apt term for ADS, although it may even be too early for that term to apply correctly.
I'll also briefly mention the concept of "serious" games, as I saw that term get bandied about during my research. "Serious" games are basically educational games - video games with the ulterior educational motive, from which we later get the term "edutainment." However, "serious" games delineate somewhat from the conventional educational game in that these are typically games used in commercial and private sectors as a means to teach employees or students, and generally aren't intended for public consumption. Some of these have floated into the public sphere, such as the America's Army series of first-person shooters from the 2000s, and the somewhat infamous Japan-only "McDonald's Training Game", eCrew Development Program (or eSMART) for the Nintendo DS. ADS marks the beginning of the "serious" game, in that it's not a game intended for public entertainment, but as a means of simulating battle scenarios and developing military strategy.
All in all, not a video game, but ADS still manages to be a rather interesting piece of the puzzle in early video game history.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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