Game 002 - Bertie the Brain: The Electronic Wonder

Release Date: 25th of August, 1950

Platform: Standalone Device

Genre: Pen & Paper

Developer(s): Josef Kates

Publisher(s): Rogers Majestic Corporation

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.

Up next: Nimrod