ORIGINS OF GAMING

Origins
Main article: First video game
A device called the Cathode-Ray Tube Amusement Device was patented in the United States by Thomas T. Goldsmith Jr. and Estle Ray Mann.[1] The patent was filed on January 25, 1947 and issued on December 14, 1948. It described using eight vacuum tubes to simulate a missile firing at a target and contains knobs to adjust the curve and speed of the missile. Because computer graphics could not be drawn electronically at the time, small targets were drawn on a simple overlay and placed on the screen.

Tennis for Two
In February 1951, Christopher Strachey tried to run a draughts programme he had written for the NPL Pilot ACE. The program exceeded the memory capacity of the machine and by October, Strachey had recoded his program for a machine at Manchester with a larger memory capacity.
OXO, a graphical version of tic-tac-toe, was created by A.S. Douglas in 1952 at the University of Cambridge, in order to demonstrate his thesis on human-computer interaction. It was developed on the EDSAC computer, which uses a cathode ray tube displaying memory contents as a visual display. The player competes against the computer.
In 1958 William Higinbotham created a game using an oscilloscope and analog computer.[2] Aptly titled Tennis for Two, it was used to entertain visitors of the Brookhaven National Laboratory in New York.[3] Tennis for Two showed a simplified tennis court from the side, featuring a gravity-controlled ball that needed to be played over the "net," unlike its successors. The game was played with two box-shaped controllers, both equipped with a knob for trajectory, and a button for hitting the ball.[2] Tennis for Two was exhibited for two seasons before its dismantlement in 1959.[4]