The History of Spacewar and the Tech Model Railroad Club

10 Questions

What is the Tech Model Railroad Club (TMRC)?

A club that played a significant role in starting the computer revolution

How did TMRC members become known as "hackers"?

They enjoyed tinkering with systems and discovering computers

Who created the first interactive computer game?

Steve Russell

What was Spacewar?

A two-player game in which players controlled rocket ships and fired torpedoes at each other

What did TMRC members add to Spacewar?

An accurate map of the stars

How did the best players use the sun's gravitational field in Spacewar?

To gain an advantage over their opponent

What did the TMRC believe in?

A cooperative society

What replaced vacuum tubes in early computers?

Silicon chips

What did Steve Russell do after creating Spacewar?

He gave the game away for free to PDP buyers

Did the creators of the first video game share the TMRC's utopian vision?

No, they did not

Study Notes

The Tech Model Railroad Club (TMRC) at MIT played a significant role in starting the computer revolution.
TMRC members were curious and enjoyed tinkering with systems, and they became known as "hackers" after discovering computers.
In 1961, Steve Russell created the first interactive computer game, Spacewar, on the PDP-1 computer.
Spacewar was a two-player game in which players controlled rocket ships and fired torpedoes at each other.
TMRC members revised Spacewar, adding elements such as an accurate map of the stars and a sun with an accurate gravitational field.
The best players learned how to use the sun's gravitational field to their advantage.
The TMRC believed in a cooperative society and often shared their PDP-1 programs with others.
Early computers were large and used vacuum tubes, requiring cooling systems to prevent fires.
Silicon chips replaced vacuum tubes, resulting in smaller and more powerful computers.
The way computers display information has also transformed over time, with computer readout screens and monitors becoming more common.
Steve Russell created the first computer game, Spacewar, in 1962.
The game involved a duel between spaceships firing torpedoes at each other.
Russell's original version had unpredictable torpedoes, but he later made them dependable.
Two members of the Tech Model Railroad Club (TMRC) created remote controllers for the game, which were the forerunner to the gamepad.
Russell never made any money from the game, and it was eventually used as a diagnostic program for testing equipment.
Russell never graduated from college and eventually moved to Seattle, where he met Bill Gates.
Russell did not attempt to copyright his work or collect royalties from it.
The creators of the first video game had a capitalistic vision and did not share the TMRC's utopian vision.
The PDP computers used to run Spacewar were not consumer commodities, particularly not arcade machines.
Digital Equipment gave the game away for free to PDP buyers.