''Tennis for Two'' (also known as ''Computer Tennis'') is a
sports video game that simulates a game of
tennis
Tennis is a racket sport that is played either individually against a single opponent ( singles) or between two teams of two players each ( doubles). Each player uses a tennis racket that is strung with cord to strike a hollow rubber ball ...
, and was one of the first games developed in the
early history of video games. American physicist
William Higinbotham
William Alfred Higinbotham (October 22, 1910 – November 10, 1994) was an American physicist. A member of the team that developed the first nuclear bomb, he later became a leader in the nonproliferation movement. He also has a place in the his ...
designed the game in 1958 for display at the
Brookhaven National Laboratory's annual public exhibition after learning that the government research institution's Donner Model 30
analog computer could simulate trajectories with wind resistance. He designed the game within a few hours, after which he and technician Robert V. Dvorak built it over a period of three weeks. The game was displayed on an
oscilloscope
An oscilloscope (informally a scope) is a type of electronic test instrument that graphically displays varying electrical voltages as a two-dimensional plot of one or more signals as a function of time. The main purposes are to display repetiti ...
and played with two custom aluminum controllers. Its visuals show a representation of a
tennis court
A tennis court is the venue where the sport of tennis is played. It is a firm rectangular surface with a low net stretched across the centre. The same surface can be used to play both doubles and singles matches. A variety of surfaces can be u ...
viewed from the side, and players adjust the angle of their shots with a knob on their controller and try to hit the ball over the net by pressing a button.
The game was very popular during the three-day exhibition, with players lining up to see the game, especially high school students. It was shown again the following year with a larger oscilloscope screen and a more complicated design that could simulate different gravity levels. It was then dismantled and largely forgotten until the late 1970s when Higinbotham testified in court about the game during lawsuits between
Magnavox and
Ralph H. Baer
Ralph Henry Baer (born Rudolf Heinrich Baer; March 8, 1922 – December 6, 2014) was a German-American inventor, game developer, and engineer.
Baer's family fled Germany just before World War II and Baer served the American war effort, gain ...
over video game patents. Since then, it has been celebrated as one of the earliest video games, and Brookhaven has made recreations of the original device. Under some definitions ''Tennis for Two'' is considered the first video game, as while it did not include any technological innovations over prior games, it was the first computer game to be created purely as an entertainment product rather than for academic research or commercial technology promotion.
Development
In 1958, American physicist
William Higinbotham
William Alfred Higinbotham (October 22, 1910 – November 10, 1994) was an American physicist. A member of the team that developed the first nuclear bomb, he later became a leader in the nonproliferation movement. He also has a place in the his ...
worked in the
Brookhaven National Laboratory in
Upton, New York
Upton is a hamlet and census-designated place (CDP) on Long Island in the town of Brookhaven. It is the home of the Brookhaven National Laboratory and a National Weather Service weather forecast office.
Upton is located on eastern Long Island in ...
, as the head of the instrumentation division. Higinbotham had a bachelor's degree in physics from
Williams College
Williams College is a Private college, private liberal arts colleges in the United States, liberal arts college in Williamstown, Massachusetts. It was established as a men's college in 1793 with funds from the estate of Ephraim Williams, a col ...
, and had previously worked as a technician in the physics department at
Cornell University
Cornell University is a private statutory land-grant research university based in Ithaca, New York. It is a member of the Ivy League. Founded in 1865 by Ezra Cornell and Andrew Dickson White, Cornell was founded with the intention to teach an ...
while unsuccessfully pursuing a Ph.D. there. He served as the head of the electronics division of the
Manhattan Project
The Manhattan Project was a research and development undertaking during World War II that produced the first nuclear weapons. It was led by the United States with the support of the United Kingdom and Canada. From 1942 to 1946, the project w ...
from 1943 to 1945, and began working at Brookhaven in 1947, which focused on researching peaceful uses of atomic power.
Once a year, the government research facility held an exhibition for the public, with one day each for high school students, college students, and the general public. The exhibition largely consisted of tours and static displays, with some attempts at making displays with "action", so for the 1958 exhibition Higinbotham decided to make an interactive display to entertain the visitors.
While reading the instruction manual for one of Brookhaven's computers, a Donner Model 30
analog computer, he learned that the computer could calculate ballistic missile trajectories or a
bouncing ball
The physics of a bouncing ball concerns the physical behaviour of bouncing balls, particularly its motion before, during, and after impact against the surface of another body. Several aspects of a bouncing ball's behaviour serve as an introd ...
with wind resistance, and he decided to use this ability to form the foundation of a game.
He later recalled his intentions were that "it might liven up the place to have a game that people could play, and which could convey the message that our scientific endeavors have relevance for society."
![Tennis for Two - Modern recreation](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b8/Tennis_for_Two_-_Modern_recreation.jpg)
Higinbotham designed a game that used an
oscilloscope
An oscilloscope (informally a scope) is a type of electronic test instrument that graphically displays varying electrical voltages as a two-dimensional plot of one or more signals as a function of time. The main purposes are to display repetiti ...
to display the path of a simulated ball on a tennis court viewed from the side. The attached computer calculated the path of the ball and reversed its path when it hit the ground. The game also simulated the ball hitting the net if it did not achieve a high enough arc as well as changes in velocity due to
drag from air resistance.
Two aluminum controllers were attached to the computer, each consisting of a button and a knob. Pressing the button hit the ball, and turning a knob controlled the angle of the shot.
Originally, Higinbotham considered having a second knob to control the velocity of the shot, but decided it would make the controller too complicated.
The device was designed in a few hours and was assembled over three weeks with the help of technician Robert V. Dvorak.
While most of the circuitry was based on
vacuum tube
A vacuum tube, electron tube, valve (British usage), or tube (North America), is a device that controls electric current flow in a high vacuum between electrodes to which an electric voltage, potential difference has been applied.
The type kn ...
s and
relay
A relay
Electromechanical relay schematic showing a control coil, four pairs of normally open and one pair of normally closed contacts
An automotive-style miniature relay with the dust cover taken off
A relay is an electrically operated switch ...
s, the circuits to display the graphics on the oscilloscope used
transistor
upright=1.4, gate (G), body (B), source (S) and drain (D) terminals. The gate is separated from the body by an insulating layer (pink).
A transistor is a semiconductor device used to Electronic amplifier, amplify or electronic switch, switch e ...
s, then beginning to replace vacuum tubes in the electronics industry.
Excluding the oscilloscope and controller, the game's circuitry approximately took up the space of a microwave oven.
Presentation
![Tennis For Two in 1959](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/2c/Tennis_For_Two_in_1959.jpg)
''Tennis for Two'' was first shown on October 18, 1958.
The game was rendered as a horizontal line, representing the tennis court, and a short vertical line in the center, representing the tennis net. The first player would press the button on their controller to send the ball, a point of light, over the net, and it would either hit the net, reach the other side of the court, or fly out of bounds. The second player could then hit the ball back with their controller while it was on their side, either before or after it bounced on the ground.
Hundreds of visitors lined up to play the new game during its debut.
Higinbotham claimed later that "the high schoolers liked it best, you couldn't pull them away from it."
Due to the game's popularity, an upgraded version was shown the following year, with enhancements including a larger screen and different levels of simulated gravity.
Players could set the game to simulate the gravity levels of the Moon or Jupiter.
Higinbotham referred to the game as ''Tennis for Two'', though a placard attached to the 1959 version titled it "Computer Tennis". After the 1959 exhibition, the game was dismantled so its components could be put to other uses.
Legacy
After being dismantled, ''Tennis for Two'' was largely forgotten. It remained virtually unknown until the late 1970s and early 1980s when Higinbotham was called on to testify in court cases for defendants sued by
Magnavox over the video game patents of
Ralph H. Baer
Ralph Henry Baer (born Rudolf Heinrich Baer; March 8, 1922 – December 6, 2014) was a German-American inventor, game developer, and engineer.
Baer's family fled Germany just before World War II and Baer served the American war effort, gain ...
.
Having discovered the game, the lawyers for the defense unsuccessfully attempted to have the game declared
prior art to invalidate Baer's patents on television video games, resulting in attention being given to the nearly 20-year-old game as possibly the first video game. It received further attention as the subject of articles in ''
Creative Computing
''Creative Computing'' was one of the earliest magazines covering the microcomputer revolution. Published from October 1974 until December 1985, the magazine covered the spectrum of hobbyist/home/personal computing in a more accessible format th ...
'' and ''Video Replay'' in 1982 and 1983 highlighting its possible status as the first video game; the editor of ''Creative Computing'',
David H. Ahl
David H. Ahl (born May 17, 1939) is an American author who is the founder of ''Creative Computing (magazine), Creative Computing'' magazine. He is also the author of many how-to books, including ''BASIC Computer Games'', the first computer book t ...
, had played ''Tennis for Two'' at Brookhaven in 1958, and dubbed Higinbotham the "Grandfather of Video Games".
Higinbotham himself felt that the game was an obvious extension of the Donner Model 30's bouncing ball program and therefore not worthy of patenting or a large part of his legacy; he preferred to be remembered for his post-World War II
nuclear non-proliferation
Nuclear proliferation is the spread of nuclear weapons, fissionable material, and weapons-applicable nuclear technology and information to nations not recognized as "List of states with nuclear weapons, Nuclear Weapon States" by the Treaty on ...
work.
![Tennis For Two re-created in 1997](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b4/Tennis_For_Two_re-created_in_1997.png)
In 1997, a team at Brookhaven recreated the game for Brookhaven's 50th anniversary. The reconstruction took about three months, partially because the parts were not readily available. This recreation was also displayed at the 2008 celebration of the 50th Anniversary of the original game.
The replica implemented an analog computer using solid-state operational amplifier devices instead of vacuum tubes as the original Donner Model 30 did. In 2010, it was replaced with a restored Donner Model 3400 analog computer.
In 2011,
Stony Brook University
Stony Brook University (SBU), officially the State University of New York at Stony Brook, is a public research university in Stony Brook, New York. Along with the University at Buffalo, it is one of the State University of New York system's ...
founded the William A. Higinbotham Game Studies Collection, dedicated to "documenting the material culture of screen-based game media", and "collecting and preserving the texts, ephemera, and artifacts that document the history and work of early game innovator and Brookhaven National Laboratory scientist William A. Higinbotham, who in 1958 invented the first interactive analog computer game, Tennis for Two."
''Tennis for Two'' is considered under some definitions to be the first video game.
Other candidates include the 1947
cathode-ray tube amusement device
The cathode-ray tube amusement device is the earliest known interactive electronic game as well as the first game to incorporate an electronic display. The device simulates an artillery shell arcing towards targets on a cathode-ray tube (CRT) scre ...
, the earliest known
interactive
Across the many fields concerned with interactivity, including information science, computer science, human-computer interaction, communication, and industrial design, there is little agreement over the meaning of the term "interactivity", but mo ...
electronic game
An electronic game is a game that uses electronics to create an interactive system with which a player can play. Video games are the most common form today, and for this reason the two terms are often used interchangeably. There are other common ...
, though it did not run on a computing device; the 1950 ''
Bertie the Brain'', the earliest known game to run on a computer, though it used light bulbs for a display; and ''
OXO'' and a
draughts
Checkers (American English), also known as draughts (; British English), is a group of strategy board games for two players which involve diagonal moves of uniform game pieces and mandatory captures by jumping over opponent pieces. Checkers ...
game by
Christopher Strachey
Christopher S. Strachey (; 16 November 1916 – 18 May 1975) was a British computer scientist. He was one of the founders of denotational semantics, and a pioneer in programming language design and computer time-sharing.F. J. Corbató, et al., ...
in 1952, the earliest digital computer games to display
visuals
The visual arts are art forms such as painting, drawing, printmaking, sculpture, ceramics, photography, video, filmmaking, design, crafts and architecture. Many artistic disciplines such as performing arts, conceptual art, and textile arts ...
on an electronic screen. ''Tennis for Two'', though it contained no technological developments to separate it from earlier games, has the distinction of being the earliest known computer game with visuals created purely for entertainment purposes.
Prior games were created primarily for academic research purposes or to demonstrate the computing power of the underlying machine, with the exception of the non-computer based cathode-ray tube amusement device. This, therefore, makes ''Tennis for Two'' the first video game under some definitions from a philosophical viewpoint rather than a technical one and a distinctive moment in the
early history of video games.
Notes
References
External links
Video of ''Tennis for Two''''Tennis for Two'' simulation
{{DEFAULTSORT:Tennis For Two
1958 video games
Early history of video games
Multiplayer video games
Tennis video games
Video games developed in the United States