Stephen Russell (born 1937), also nicknamed "Slug", is an American computer scientist most famous for creating '' Spacewar!'', well known for being the first widely distributed

video game Video games, also known as computer games, are electronic games that involves interaction with a user interface or input device such as a joystick, game controller, controller, computer keyboard, keyboard, or motion sensing device to gener ...

Biography

Born in Hartford, Connecticut, Russell attended

Dartmouth College Dartmouth College (; ) is a private research university in Hanover, New Hampshire. Established in 1769 by Eleazar Wheelock, it is one of the nine colonial colleges chartered before the American Revolution. Although founded to educate Native ...

Hanover, New Hampshire Hanover is a town located along the Connecticut River in Grafton County, New Hampshire, United States. As of the 2020 census, its population was 11,870. The town is home to the Ivy League university Dartmouth College, the U.S. Army Corps of ...

, from 1954 to 1958. Russell wrote the first two implementations of the programming language

Lisp A lisp is a speech impairment in which a person misarticulates sibilants (, , , , , , , ). These misarticulations often result in unclear speech. Types * A frontal lisp occurs when the tongue is placed anterior to the target. Interdental lispi ...

for the IBM 704

mainframe computer A mainframe computer, informally called a mainframe or big iron, is a computer used primarily by large organizations for critical applications like bulk data processing for tasks such as censuses, industry and consumer statistics, enterpris ...

. It was Russell who realized that the concept of universal functions could be applied to the language. By implementing the Lisp universal evaluator in a lower-level language, it became possible to create the Lisp interpreter; prior development work on the language had focused on compiling the language. He invented the

continuation In computer science, a continuation is an abstract representation of the control state of a computer program. A continuation implements ( reifies) the program control state, i.e. the continuation is a data structure that represents the computat ...

to solve a double recursion problem for one of the users of his Lisp implementation. In 1962, Russell created and designed '' Spacewar!'', with the fellow members of the Tech Model Railroad Club at the

Massachusetts Institute of Technology The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a Private university, private Land-grant university, land-grant research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Established in 1861, MIT has played a key role in the development of modern t ...

(MIT), working on a

Digital Equipment Corporation Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC ), using the trademark Digital, was a major American company in the computer industry from the 1960s to the 1990s. The company was co-founded by Ken Olsen and Harlan Anderson in 1957. Olsen was president unti ...

(DEC)

PDP-1 The PDP-1 (''Programmed Data Processor-1'') is the first computer in Digital Equipment Corporation's PDP series and was first produced in 1959. It is famous for being the computer most important in the creation of hacker culture at Massachusett ...

minicomputer. ''Spacewar!'' is widely considered to be the first digital video game and served as a foundation for the entire video game industry. He later served as an executive of Computer Center Corporation (nicknamed C-Cubed), a small time-sharing company in

Washington (state) Washington (), officially the State of Washington, is a state in the Pacific Northwest region of the Western United States. Named for George Washington—the first U.S. president—the state was formed from the western part of the Washin ...

. In the fall of 1968, he mentored

Bill Gates William Henry Gates III (born October 28, 1955) is an American business magnate and philanthropist. He is a co-founder of Microsoft, along with his late childhood friend Paul Allen. During his career at Microsoft, Gates held the positions ...

and Paul Allen on the use of the DEC PDP-10 mainframe, while they were part of the programming group of Lakeside School (Seattle).

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External links

{{DEFAULTSORT:Russell, Steve Video game programmers Living people Dartmouth College alumni 1937 births American computer scientists Lisp (programming language) people People from Hartford, Connecticut Game Developers Conference Pioneer Award recipients Bill Gates Lakeside School alumni Early history of video games

Biography

See also

References

External links