History of VIDEO GAMING The First GAMING Ever Made

As lido88 devoted retro-gamer, for a while I've been particularly interested in the history of video games. To become more specific, a subject that I am very passionate about is "Which was the first video game available?"... So, I started an exhaustive investigation with this subject (and causeing this to be article the initial one in some articles that may cover in detail all video gaming history).

The question was: That was the first video game ever made?

The answer: Well, as lots of things in life, there is absolutely no easy answer to that question. It depends on your own definition of the term "video game". For example: When you talk about "the first video game", do you mean the first video game that has been commercially-made, or the initial console game, or maybe the first digitally programmed game? For this reason, I made a list of 4-5 video gaming that in a single way or another were the beginners of the video gaming industry. You will notice that the first video games were not made up of the idea of getting any profit from them (back those decades there was no Nintendo, Sony, Microsoft, Sega, Atari, or any gaming company around). Actually, lido88 of a "gaming" or an electric device which was only made for "playing games and having fun" was above the imagination of over 99% of the population back in those days. But thanks to this small band of geniuses who walked the initial steps into the video gaming revolution, we're able to enjoy several hours of fun and entertainment today (keeping aside the creation of an incredible number of jobs in the past four or five 5 decades). Without further ado, here I present the "first gaming nominees":

1940s: Cathode Ray Tube Amusement Device

That is considered (with official documentation) because the first electronic game device ever made. It was developed by Thomas T. Goldsmith Jr. and Estle Ray Mann. The game was assembled in the 1940s and submitted for an US Patent in January 1947. The patent was granted December 1948, which also makes it the initial electronic game device to ever get a patent (US Patent 2,455,992). As described in the patent, it was an analog circuit device having an selection of knobs used to go a dot that appeared in the cathode ray tube display. lido88 was inspired by how missiles appeared in WWII radars, and the thing of the overall game was simply controlling a "missile" to be able to hit a target. In the 1940s it had been extremely difficult (for not saying impossible) to show graphics in a Cathode Ray Tube display. Due to this, only the specific "missile" appeared on the display. The prospective and any graphics were showed on screen overlays manually placed on the display screen. It's been said by many that Atari's famous gaming "Missile Command" was created after this gaming device.

1951: NIMROD

NIMROD was the name of an electronic computer device from the 50s decade. The creators of the computer were the engineers of an UK-based company beneath the name Ferranti, with the thought of displaying the device at the 1951 Festival of Britain (and later it had been also showed in Berlin).

NIM is really a two-player numerical game of strategy, that is believed to come originally from the ancient China. The rules of NIM are easy: There are a certain amount of groups (or "heaps"), and each group includes a certain amount of objects (a standard starting selection of NIM is 3 heaps containing 3, 4, and 5 objects respectively). Each player take turns removing objects from the heaps, but all removed objects must be from a single heap and at least one object is removed. The player to take the last object from the final heap loses, however there is a variation of the game where the player to take the last object of the last heap wins.