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The history of video games spans a period of time between the invention of the first electronic games and today, covering a long period of invention and changes. Video gaming would not reach mainstream popularity until the 1970s and 1980s, when arcade video games, gaming consoles and home computer games were introduced to the general public. Since then, video gaming has become a popular form of entertainment and a part of modern culture in most parts of the world. The early history of video games, therefore, covers the period of time between the first interactive electronic game in 1947 and the rise of early arcade video games with ''Pong'' and the beginning of the first generation of video game consoles with the Magnavox Odyssey, both in 1972. In between these two points in time was a wide range of devices and inventions; there are numerous debates over which game should be considered the "first video game", with the answer depending largely on how video games are defined. 1947 saw the invention of the cathode ray tube amusement device, the earliest known interactive electronic game to use an electronic display, though the device was never released. It was followed by ''Bertie the Brain'' and the NIMROD computer in 1951 and 1952, the first arcade video games, both featuring lightbulb-based displays and running on specialty-built computers to play one game each at a public festival. ''OXO'' followed in 1952 as the first software-based game to have a true video display, and 1958's ''Tennis for Two'' featured moving graphics on an oscilloscope connected to a general-purpose analog computer. Interactive graphical programs then began to be created for experimental computers, leading up to the release of ''Spacewar!'' in 1962 as one of the earliest known digital computer games to be available outside a single research institute. Throughout the rest of the 1960s, digital computer games were created by numerous programmers and sometimes sold commercially in catalogs. The early history of video games transitioned into a new era in the early 1970s with first the release of ''Galaxy Game'', the first coin-operated arcade game, and the first widely-available arcade game ''Computer Space'', and then in 1972 with the release of the immensely-successful arcade game ''Pong'' and the first home video game console, the Magnavox Odyssey. ==Analog and lightbulb games== The cathode ray tube amusement device is the earliest known interactive electronic game to use an electronic display. The player simulates an artillery shell trajectory on a cathode ray tube (CRT) screen connected to an oscilloscope, with a set of knobs and switches. The device uses purely analog electronics and does not use any memory device, digital computer, or programming. The device was invented by Thomas T. Goldsmith, Jr. and Estle Ray Mann in 1947; the patent was filed on January 25, 1947 and issued on December 14, 1948. The patent, the first for an electronic game, was never used and the device never manufactured beyond the original handmade prototypes.〔 Around the same time as the device was invented, Alan Turing, a British mathematician, developed a theoretical computer chess program as an example of machine intelligence. In 1947, Turing wrote the theory for a program to play chess. His colleague Dietrich Prinz〔http://www.mosi.org.uk/media/34368825/ferranti%20mark%20i%20computer.pdf〕 later wrote the first limited program of chess for Manchester University's Ferranti Mark I, in 1951. The program was only capable of computing "mate-in-two" problems and was not powerful enough to play a full game. Input and output were offline, and there was no "video" involved. The first publicly-available electronic game was created in 1950. ''Bertie the Brain'' was an arcade game of tic-tac-toe, built by Dr. Josef Kates for the 1950 Canadian National Exhibition. To showcase his new miniature vacuum tube, the additron tube, he designed a specialized computer to use it, which he built with the assistance of engineers from Rogers Majestic. The large metal computer, which was four meters tall, could only play tic-tac-toe on a lightbulb-backed display, and was installed in the Engineering Building at the Canadian National Exhibition from 25 August–9 September 1950. The game was a success at the two-week exhibition, with attendees lining up to play it as Kates adjusted the difficulty up and down for players. After the exhibition, ''Bertie'' was dismantled, and "largely forgotten" as a novelty. Kates has said that he was working on so many projects at the same time that he had no energy to spare for preserving it, despite its significance.〔 Nearly a year later on May 5, 1951, the NIMROD computer, created by Ferranti, was presented at the Festival of Britain. Using a panel of lights for its display, it was designed exclusively to play the game of ''Nim''. NIMROD could play either the traditional or "reverse" form of the game. It was based on an earlier Nim-playing machine, "Nimatron", designed by E.U. Condon and built by Westinghouse Electric in 1940 for display at the New York World's Fair, being patented the same year. "Nimatron" had been constructed from electromechanical relays and weighed over a ton. Around this time, non-visual games were being developed at various research computer laboratories; for example, Christopher Strachey developed a simulation of the game draughts for the Pilot ACE that ran for the first time on 30 July 1951 at the British National Physical Laboratory. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Early history of video games」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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