Game 001x - Air Defense Simulation: The Alternative First Video Game

Release Date: 1948

Platform: REAC 100

Genre: Wargame

Developer(s): Operations Research Office

Publisher(s): Operations Research Office

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 entire thing 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.

Next up: Bertie the Brain (1950)

#036: Chief - Indian Boomerang Puzzle

Release Date: July 1973

Platform: Mainframe (Basic Type-In)

Genre: Educational, Non-Game

Developer(s): John Graham

Publisher(s): Digital Equipment Corporation

Alrighty, folks - this is a weird one. Immediately I'm going to make a call on it being not a game. What we have is essentially another Boomerang Puzzle, but this time with some casual racism inserted into it. Fun! This one will, as a result, be much shorter than the last couple of articles.

#031: Boomerang Puzzle - I Know the Greeks Invented Everything, but Boomerangs?

Release Date: July 1973

Platform: Mainframe (BASIC Type-In)

Genre: Puzzle, Non-Game

Developer(s): David H. Ahl, Nicomachus [ed. or maybe not...]

Publisher(s): Digital Equipment Corporation

It seems like a bizarre place to go, but I'm about to go on a short diatribe about Greek philosophers on a video game blog. The Greeks invented everything, don't ya know?

Anyway... we owe a lot to the Ancient Greek philosophers. Much of what we know and understand about the world was originally discovered by them, as well as methods of understanding. Plato, Aristotle, Archimedes, Pythagoras - we could go on listing them. Another of these names, certainly not as well known as those I just listed, is Nicomachus of Gerasa. The distinction needs to be made, for there are several notable individuals named Nicomachus. Technically, Nicomachus of Gerasa isn't a Greek, but a Roman, for Gerasa was in Roman Syria - which is today in modern Jordan. Greco-Roman culture had a lot of overlapping though, so you could excuse thinking Nicomachus was a Greek. He was, after all, inspired by one of the great Greeks - Pythagoras. Nicomachus was a Neopythagorean philosopher, which was a movement concerned with the revival of Pythagoras' teachings. For reference, Pythagoras lived in the 6th century BC, whereas Nicomachus lived in the 1st century AD - about 600 years after Pythagoras. Nicomachus was primarily interested in the study of arithmetic and music, and produced his most notable work on the former of these - his Introduction to Arithmetic.

Artist's rendition of Nicomachus. This picture looks funny.

All of this is relevant, I promise...

Nicomachus' Introduction to Arithmetic became the standard mathematics textbook for over 1000 years. Supposedly, an arithmetic puzzle was derived from this book which was given the nickname "boomerang." Unless the Greeks invented those, too, this is a rather anachronistic nickname. This puzzle involves being able to guess a number between 1 and 100 based on the result of dividing it by either 3, 5, or 7 and the remainder.

That's David Ahl's explanation of it, anyway. He took this puzzle and digitized it for today's Boomerang Puzzle, including it in 101 BASIC Computer Games. The trouble is, I scanned through the entire Introduction to Arithmetic to find Ahl's source for the puzzle, and couldn't find what he was referring to. There wasn't really anything close to what he described, in fact. There's a "sieve" method referenced, but that doesn't even belong to Nicomachus.

Artist's rendition of... something. This picture looks terrifying.

Maybe there's a writing of Nicomachus' I've missed - Ahl cites his source as the "Arithmetica," which I assume is Introduction to Arithmetic under a different name, as no results appear when searching for "Arithmetica" online. Ahl was very insistent on the puzzle originating from Nicomachus - so much so that he titled the game after him - NICOMA in the original book, Nicomachus in the microcomputer edition. If anyone does know what Ahl's source is, please let me know in the comments.

So, maybe Nicomachus actually isn't that relevant after all...

[Ed. A helpful commentor cleared up this confusion. Ahl, or whoever he was referencing, had more than likely been mistaken or misremembered the source of the Boomerang Puzzle. In fact, the earliest example of it comes from Sunzi Suanjing, a mathematical writing from Chinese mathematician Sunzi (or Sun Zi - not to be confused with Sun Tzu) at least 200 years after Nicomachus. This formula is commonly known as the Chinese remainder theorem. If the Greeks didn't invent it... the Chinese probably did!]

Regardless, there's still a game to be played.

Or is there? 

To be perfectly frank, after playing Boomerang Puzzle, I don't actually think it's a game. This is more of a novelty program than anything. It's a "pick a number between 1 and 100" guessing game, along the lines of earlier games Trap and Stars. However, it's not you guessing the number this time - the computer is doing the "guessing." Role reversal! You think of a number and, based on the remainder of the number after being divided by 3, then 5, and finally 7, the computer knows exactly what number you chose.

At least Ahl got the date right.

I messed up my sums with my first number choice - 97. Second time around I got it right and the computer - as expected - guessed my number. One who is more obsessed than I may consider running through every number just to see if there's any chink in the computer's armour. I got up to about 14 before I got bored.

My arithmetic was indeed in error.

I must admit, I'm rather disappointed. This has ended on quite an anticlimax. All that talk of history and Greco-Roman philosophers, which is of great interest to me, built Boomerang Puzzle up to be something quite interesting. Alas, it was not. All we've ended up with is something of a novelty educational program.

In case it wasn't already obvious, I'm not giving this a score - I can't classify Boomerang Puzzle as a game; there isn't really any "gameplay" to speak of. Boomerang Puzzle is merely a novelty showcase of what you can do with coding algorithms. The only sense in which there's "gameplay" is doing your sums properly so as to not confuse the computer. It tells you when you're wrong anyway, and you just try again. No penalty for getting it wrong. In that sense, it has some use in teaching basic division with remainders, so I could argue that it's something of an educational program at least. Maybe "winning" is getting the computer to guess your number correctly? I'm clutching at straws at this point. I stand by my decision. Can't help but be disappointed, though.

Hopefully, next time, we have something more interesting.

#016x (Gaiden 01): Animal - "Machine Learning" Taken Literally

Release Date: April 6, 1973

Platform: Mainframe

Genre: Non-game

Developer(s): Arthur Luehrmann, Nathan Teichholtz, Steve North

Publisher(s): Digital Equipment Corporation

And now for something... really different. I'm not even sure this qualifies as a game, to be completely honest. It's more like... artificial intelligence training. 

I'll explain what I mean. Animal is a guessing game, except the one doing the guessing is not the player, but rather the computer. Your role, as a "game master" of sorts, is to teach the computer new animals. You start by thinking of an animal, and then the computer will asks questions to try and guess the animal. It only knows two to start with - fish and bird - and only three questions, but you can teach it new animals, and to ask questions to distinguish between animals. 

The concept for Animal was developed at the home of BASIC, Dartmouth College, by Arthur Luehrmann. I found a substantial interview he did with Kevin Bunch at Atari Archive back in September, 2022 that gives plenty of background on Luehrmann's life and career. I rather enjoy a lot of Bunch's work, and it's a great interview. Luehrmann was a physics professor at Dartmouth from 1965 - 77, and was an early champion of BASIC, writing a few games other than Animal, including one called Potshot. Animal is briefly mentioned in the interview, but is not the main focus of the interview. Most the discussion they have on that game is on the need for a "filth filter" to parse out all the possible vulgarities college students might invent when given free reign to type whatever they like into a game. Animal just seemed to be another of the many experiments conducted with BASIC during its formative years.

I hope that's not how the computer pictures said animals...

Digital Equipment Corporation later got their hands on Animal, where it was modified by Nathan Teichholtz and included in 101 BASIC Computer Games. Steve North of Creative Computing (David Ahl's post-DEC organisation) would further modify the game when the microcomputer edition of the book released in 1978. One of the distinguishing features of the original game was its being one of - if not the very first game - to have a save feature. All of the information you taught the computer could be saved to be used next time the program was run. Theoretically, you could spend a couple of hours teaching the computer several animals, and then invite a friend to test what the computer had learned.

However, the save feature is not in the 1978 modification of the game, which also happens to be the version I have access to. The write-up claims that you could theoretically modify the game to allow for a form of saving, but that could only be done if your system allowed for it. Admittedly, I think this kind of defeats the purpose of Animal. You need to spend a decent amount of time teaching the computer various animals, and having nowhere to save that data spoils the fun.

The '78 edition page on Animal. Now with less scary monsters.

I know I've referred to Animal as a game throughout the article, but, after researching and playing it, it's not really a game at all, if I'm being blunt. My thoughts circulated into one summary point to describe Animal - and it's a weird one, so bear with me - which is that the program is essentially a flowchart creator. The computer asks you a question, like "does the animal swim?" and, based on your answer, it will ask another question (once you build up its database.) It's literally:

• Ask question
• If yes, then A
• If no, then B
• Repeat until animal is guessed

And you can expand the flowchart as much as you want. It's a novel idea, and, as the '78 edition of BASIC Computer Games suggests, it has potential use in an educational environment.

What? I like otters. They're cute.

All this is to say, that I'm making this my first Gaiden article. To recap, in case you haven't read the "My Process" page linked in the sidebar (which is probably due for a revision,) I have two main categories of articles: regular articles and "gaiden" articles (Japanese for "side story" - I shamelessly ripped this idea from Fire Emblem.) Regular articles are the main article, denoted by a number, and are simply all the games that my rules permit me to apply a score to. Gaiden articles are marked with an "x" after the number of the previous article, and are for games (or software, in this case) that I cannot in good conscience provide a score for. Usually this would be for multiplayer-only games, but also the odd non-game like Animal. They're also not counted in the game statistics in the sidebar.

So, I won't be scoring Animal. It's not a game - at least, it doesn't fit within my definition of a game. It's more of a historical curiosity; a glimpse into the infancy of artificial intelligence, and also a novel flowchart creator.

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