More than fifty
years ago, before either arcades or home video games, visitors waited in
line at Brookhaven National Laboratory to play “Tennis for Two,” an
electronic tennis game that is unquestionably a forerunner of the modern
video game.
Tennis for Two was first introduced on October 18, 1958, at one of
the Lab’s annual visitors’ days. Two people played the electronic tennis
game with separate controllers that connected to an analog computer and
used an oscilloscope for a screen. The game’s creator, William
Higinbotham, was a nuclear physicist lobbied for nuclear
nonproliferation as the first chair of the Federation of American
Scientists.
