William Crowther (born 1936) is an American
computer programmer
A computer programmer, sometimes referred to as a software developer, a software engineer, a programmer or a coder, is a person who creates computer programs — often for larger computer software.
A programmer is someone who writes/creates ...
,
caver
Caving – also known as spelunking in the United States and Canada and potholing in the United Kingdom and Ireland – is the recreational pastime of exploring wild cave systems (as distinguished from show caves). In contrast, speleology is ...
, and
rock climber
Rock climbing is a sport in which participants climb up, across, or down natural rock formations. The goal is to reach the summit of a formation or the endpoint of a usually pre-defined route without falling. Rock climbing is a physically an ...
. He is the co-creator of ''
Colossal Cave Adventure
''Colossal Cave Adventure'' (also known as ''Adventure'' or ''ADVENT'') is a text-based adventure game, released in 1976 by developer Will Crowther for the PDP-10 mainframe computer. It was expanded upon in 1977 by Don Woods. In the game, the pl ...
'' from 1975 onward, a seminal computer game that influenced the first decade of
video game design
Video game design is the process of designing the content and rules of video games in the pre-production stage and designing the gameplay, environment, storyline and characters in the production stage. Some common video game design subdiscipline ...
and inspired the
text adventure
''
Interactive fiction, often abbreviated IF, is software simulating environments in which players use text commands to control characters and influence the environment. Works in this form can be understood as literary narratives, either in the ...
game genre
Game classification is the classification of games, forming a game taxonomy. Many different methods of classifying games exist.
Physical education
There are four basic approaches to classifying the games used in physical education:
;Game cate ...
.
Biography
![IMP Team](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f4/IMP_Team.jpg)
During the early 1970s, Crowther worked at
defense contractor
The arms industry, also known as the arms trade, is a global industry which manufactures and sells weapons and military technology. It consists of a commercial industry involved in the research and development, engineering, production, and serv ...
and
internet
The Internet (or internet) is the global system of interconnected computer networks that uses the Internet protocol suite (TCP/IP) to communicate between networks and devices. It is a '' network of networks'' that consists of private, pub ...
pioneer
Bolt Beranek and Newman
Raytheon BBN (originally Bolt Beranek and Newman Inc.) is an American research and development company, based next to Fresh Pond in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States.
In 1966, the Franklin Institute awarded the firm the Frank P. Brow ...
(BBN), where he was part of the original small
ARPAnet
The Advanced Research Projects Agency Network (ARPANET) was the first wide-area packet-switched network with distributed control and one of the first networks to implement the TCP/IP protocol suite. Both technologies became the technical fou ...
development team. His implementation of a distributed distance vector routing system for the ARPAnet was an important step in the evolution of the internet.
Crowther met and married
Pat Crowther while studying at the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a private land-grant research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Established in 1861, MIT has played a key role in the development of modern technology and science, and is one of the ...
, where he received a
B.S.
A Bachelor of Science (BS, BSc, SB, or ScB; from the Latin ') is a bachelor's degree awarded for programs that generally last three to five years.
The first university to admit a student to the degree of Bachelor of Science was the University ...
in
physics
Physics is the natural science that studies matter, its fundamental constituents, its motion and behavior through space and time, and the related entities of energy and force. "Physical science is that department of knowledge which r ...
in 1958.
Adventure
Following his divorce from his wife, Crowther used his spare time to develop a text-based adventure game in
Fortran on BBN's
PDP-10
Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC)'s PDP-10, later marketed as the DECsystem-10, is a mainframe computer family manufactured beginning in 1966 and discontinued in 1983. 1970s models and beyond were marketed under the DECsystem-10 name, especi ...
. He created it as a diversion his daughters Sandy and Laura could enjoy when they came to visit.
Crowther wrote:
In
Colossal Cave, or more simply called
''Adventure'', the player moves around an imaginary cave system by entering simple, two-word commands and reading text describing the result.
Crowther used his extensive knowledge of cave exploration as a basis for the gameplay, and there are many similarities between the locations in the game and those in Mammoth Cave, particularly its
Bedquilt
A quilt is a multi-layered textile, traditionally composed of two or more layers of fabric or fiber. Commonly three layers are used with a filler material. These layers traditionally include a woven cloth top, a layer of batting or wadding, a ...
section.
In 1975, Crowther released the game on the early
ARPAnet
The Advanced Research Projects Agency Network (ARPANET) was the first wide-area packet-switched network with distributed control and one of the first networks to implement the TCP/IP protocol suite. Both technologies became the technical fou ...
system, of which BBN was a prime contractor.
In the spring of 1976, he was contacted by Stanford researcher
Don Woods Donald Woods (1933–2001) was a South African journalist and activist.
Donald or Don Woods may also refer to:
* Donald Woods (actor) (1906–1998), Canadian-born American film and television actor
* Donald Devereux Woods (1912–1964), British m ...
, seeking his permission to enhance the game. Crowther agreed, and Woods developed several enhanced versions on a
PDP-10
Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC)'s PDP-10, later marketed as the DECsystem-10, is a mainframe computer family manufactured beginning in 1966 and discontinued in 1983. 1970s models and beyond were marketed under the DECsystem-10 name, especi ...
housed in the
Stanford Artificial Intelligence Laboratory
Stanford University has many centers and institutes dedicated to the study of various specific topics. These centers and institutes may be within a department, within a school but across departments, an independent laboratory, institute or center ...
(SAIL) where he worked.
Over the following decade the game gained in popularity, being ported to many
operating systems
An operating system (OS) is system software that manages computer hardware, software resources, and provides common services for computer programs.
Time-sharing operating systems schedule tasks for efficient use of the system and may also inc ...
, including personal-computer platform
CP/M
CP/M, originally standing for Control Program/Monitor and later Control Program for Microcomputers, is a mass-market operating system created in 1974 for Intel 8080/ 85-based microcomputers by Gary Kildall of Digital Research, Inc. Initial ...
.
The basic game structure invented by Crowther (and based in part on the example of the
ELIZA
ELIZA is an early natural language processing computer program created from 1964 to 1966 at the MIT Artificial Intelligence Laboratory by Joseph Weizenbaum. Created to demonstrate the superficiality of communication between humans and machines, E ...
text
parser
Parsing, syntax analysis, or syntactic analysis is the process of analyzing a string of symbols, either in natural language, computer languages or data structures, conforming to the rules of a formal grammar. The term ''parsing'' comes from Lati ...
) was carried forward by the designers of later adventure games.
Marc Blank
Marc Blank is an American game developer and software engineer. He is best known as part of the team that created one of the first commercially successful text adventure computer games, ''Zork''.
Career
Blank first encountered Don Woods and Will ...
and the team that created the
Zork
''Zork'' is a text-based adventure game first released in 1977 by developers Tim Anderson, Marc Blank, Bruce Daniels, and Dave Lebling for the PDP-10 mainframe computer. The original developers and others, as the company Infocom, expanded a ...
adventures cite ''Adventure'' as the title that inspired them to create their game. They later founded
Infocom
Infocom was an American software company based in Cambridge, Massachusetts, that produced numerous works of interactive fiction. They also produced a business application, a relational database called ''Cornerstone (software), Cornerstone''.
...
and published a series of popular text adventures.
Caving
The location of the game in ''Colossal Cave'' was not a coincidence. Crowther and his first wife Pat were active and dedicated cavers in the 1960s and early 1970s—both were part of many expeditions to connect the
Mammoth
A mammoth is any species of the extinct elephantid genus ''Mammuthus'', one of the many genera that make up the order of trunked mammals called proboscideans. The various species of mammoth were commonly equipped with long, curved tusks and, ...
and
Flint Ridge cave systems. Pat played a key role in the September 9, 1972 expedition that finally
made the connection.
Indeed, even during his time working at BBN, his colleagues noticed that Crowther spent a fair amount of time doing chin-ups in doorframes, which apparently helped him concentrate.
As a member of the
MIT Outing Club
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 ...
during the late 1950s and early 1960s, Crowther also played an important role in the development of rock climbing in the
Shawangunks in
New York State
New York, officially the State of New York, is a state in the Northeastern United States. It is often called New York State to distinguish it from its largest city, New York City. With a total area of , New York is the 27th-largest U.S. stat ...
.
He began climbing there in the 1950s and continues to climb. He made the first ascent of several classic routes including Arrow, Hawk, Moonlight, and Senté. Some of these routes sparked controversy because protection bolts were placed on rappel, a new tactic that Crowther and several others began to use at the time. The community reaction to this technique was an important part of the evolution of climbing ethics in the Shawangunks and beyond.
Later career
Crowther worked at
Xerox PARC
PARC (Palo Alto Research Center; formerly Xerox PARC) is a research and development company in Palo Alto, California. Founded in 1969 by Jacob E. "Jack" Goldman, chief scientist of Xerox Corporation, the company was originally a division of Xero ...
from 1976 to 1983. During this period he met and married Nancy Sanders Burnes in 1980 in
Palo Alto, California
Palo Alto (; Spanish language, Spanish for "tall stick") is a charter city in the northwestern corner of Santa Clara County, California, United States, in the San Francisco Bay Area, named after a Sequoia sempervirens, coastal redwood tree kno ...
. The two of them did a lot of rock climbing with friends in
Yosemite and elsewhere. In 1983 he left Xerox and went back to Bolt Beranek and Newman in
Cambridge, Massachusetts
Cambridge ( ) is a city in Middlesex County, Massachusetts, United States. As part of the Boston metropolitan area, the cities population of the 2020 U.S. census was 118,403, making it the fourth most populous city in the state, behind Boston, ...
. He became active with the
Appalachian Mountain Club
Appalachian Mountain Club (AMC) is the oldest outdoor group in the United States. Created in 1876 to explore and preserve the White Mountains in New Hampshire, it has expanded throughout the northeastern U.S., with 12 chapters stretching from Ma ...
and every year helped teach rock climbing to beginners. He continued doing that each spring until 2013.
In the 1990s,
Cisco Systems
Cisco Systems, Inc., commonly known as Cisco, is an American-based multinational corporation, multinational digital communications technology conglomerate (company), conglomerate corporation headquartered in San Jose, California. Cisco develo ...
bought the part of BBN where Crowther was working. He continued to work for Cisco until his retirement in 1997 to live in
Delanson, New York
Delanson is a village in Schenectady County, New York, United States. The population was 377 at the 2010 census. Delanson is in the southeastern portion of the town of Duanesburg.
Geography
Delanson is located at (42.748640, -74.185222).
Acco ...
with his second wife Nancy.
References
Bibliography
* Dibbell, Julian: "A Marketable Wonder - Spelunking the American Imagination"
* Brucker, Roger W.; Watson, Richard A. (1976). ''The Longest Cave''. New York: Knopf. .
* Montfort, Nick (2003). ''Twisty Little Passages: An Approach To Interactive Fiction''. Cambridge: The MIT Press. .
* Where Wizards Stay Up Late, by
Katie Hafner
Katie Hafner (born December 5, 1957) is an American journalist and author. She is a former staff member of ''The New York Times'', and has written articles about technology, healthcare, and society, and books about the computer underground, the hi ...
and Matthew Lyon
*
Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution, by
Steven Levy
Steven Levy (born 1951) is an American journalist and Editor at Large for ''Wired'' who has written extensively for publications on computers, technology, cryptography, the internet, cybersecurity, and privacy. He is the author of the 1984 book ...
*
The Soul of a New Machine
''The Soul of a New Machine'' is a non-fiction book written by Tracy Kidder and published in 1981. It chronicles the experiences of a computer engineering team racing to design a next-generation computer at a blistering pace under tremendous ...
, by
Tracy Kidder
John Tracy Kidder (born November 12, 1945) is an American writer of nonfiction books. He received the Pulitzer Prize for his '' The Soul of a New Machine'' (1981), about the creation of a new computer at Data General Corporation. He has recei ...
* ''Computing in the Middle Ages: A View From the Trenches 1955-1983'' by
Severo Ornstein
Severo M. Ornstein (born 1930) is a retired computer scientist and son of American composer Leo Ornstein. In 1955 he joined MIT's Lincoln Laboratory as a programmer and designer for the SAGE air-defense system. He later joined the TX-2 group and ...
* Peterson, Dale: "Genesis II: Creation and Recreation with Computers", (1983).
*IMP team photo, BB
External links
* Jerz, D.G. 2007
Somewhere Nearby is Colossal Cave: Examining Will Crowther's Original "Adventure" in Code and in Kentucky ''
Digital Humanities Quarterly
''Digital Humanities Quarterly'' is a peer-reviewed open-access academic journal covering all aspects of digital media in the humanities. The journal is also a community experiment in journal publication.
The journal is funded and published by the ...
'' 1:2, summer 2007.
{{DEFAULTSORT:Crowther, William
Living people
Video game programmers
Video game designers
Interactive fiction writers
American cavers
1936 births
Game Developers Conference Pioneer Award recipients