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nim
Edward U. Condon designs a computer for the Westinghouse display at the World’s Fair that plays the traditional game Nim in which players try to avoid picking up the last match. Tens of thousands of people play it, and the computer wins at least 90% of the games. -
cathode ray tube amusement device
Thomas T. Goldsmith Jr. and Estle Ray Mann file a patent for a "cathode ray tube amusement device." Their game, which uses a cathode ray tube hooked to an oscilloscope display, challenges players to fire a gun at a target. -
chess
Claude Shannon lays out the basic guidelines for programming a chess-playing computer in an article, "Programming a Computer for Playing Chess." That same year both he and Englishman Alan Turing create chess programs. -
OXO
A. S. Douglass creates OXO (a game known as noughts and crosses in the United Kingdom and tic-tac-toe in the United States) on Cambridge's EDSAC computer as part of his research on human-computer interactions -
blackjack
Programmers at New Mexico's Los Alamos laboratories, the birthplace of the atomic bomb, develop the first blackjack program on an IBM-701 computer. -
hutspiel
The long tradition of military wargaming enters the computer age when the U.S. military designs Hutspiel, in which Red and Blue players (representing NATO and Soviet commanders) wage war. -
defeats checkers master
Arthur Samuel demonstrates his computer checkers program, written on an IBM-701, on national television. Six years later the program defeats a checkers master. -
complete chess program
Alex Bernstein writes the first complete computer chess program on an IBM-704 computer—a program advanced enough to evaluate four half-moves ahead. -
tennis game on an oscilloscope
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Students at MIT create Mouse in the Maze on MIT's TX-0 computer
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Spacewar!
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stage
Months after the Cuban Missile Crisis, the U.S. Defense Department completes a computer war game known as STAGE (Simulation of Total Atomic Global Exchange) which "shows" that the United States would defeat the Soviet Union in a thermonuclear war. -
Dartmouth student programs the first computer football game.
A day after Dartmouth defeats Princeton 28–14 in football to win the Ivy League championship, a Dartmouth student programs the first computer football game. Earlier that year, John Kemeny and Keith Bellairs had created the first computer game in BASIC. -
brown box
Started to demonstrate revised unit adding light gun and joy-stick interface- the "Brown Box" - first fully-programmable, multi-player video game unit. Demonstrations were made to TV-set manufacturers including RCA, GE, Zenith, Sylvania, Magnavox, Warwick (Sears) - Yes, TV sets were manufactured in the US in those years! Most demos took place at Sanders Associates' Nashua NH plant. -
odyssey
Magnavox shows first "Odyssey" video game to large groups of Magnavox dealers in several US locations (Tavern-on-the-Green in NY, etc.) HOME VIDEO GAMES ARE LAUNCHED NATIONWIDE!