William Higinbotham

Would you like to know about an inventor who invented the first video game, liked to play board games, and had a great life? Well then you would like my inventor

William Alfred Higinbotham was born October 25, 1910 in Bridgeport, Connecticut. When Willy was a child he enjoyed playing all types of board games. He liked to play board games because that was the only types of games that were around. Willy had tons of favorite board games that he would play with. While playing with board games he came up with the idea to create an electronic video game.

Willy earned his undergraduate degree from Williams College in 1932 and then continued to study and get an education at Cornell University and MIT. After college and during World War II, Willy worked at Los Alamos National Laboratory where he headed the lab’s electronics group. In 1958 he invented the first video game, Tennis for Two. Tennis for Two is similar to the game better known today as Ping Pong.

The game Tennis for Two was originally invented by Higinbotham to entertain visitors of the Brookhaven National Laboratory. It was invented on a machine called an oscilloscope. Playing this game was like playing tennis on a computer. The visitors had lots of fun playing this game.

Some people still have questions on who really invented the first video game. In 1952 a person named A.S. Douglas created a computer game that was called Tic-Tac-Toe. Then in 1962, Steve Russell, invented a game named SpaceWar!. This was the first game to be used on a computer. Ralph Baer, in 1967, wrote a game which was the first game to be played on a television set. He first thought of this idea in 1951. Lastly Nolan Bushnell invented the first arcade game called Computer Space which was an idea taken from SpaceWar!. The next year they created the arcade game Pong and the first home video game system Atari Computers. William Higinbotham was the first to present his invention to the public. He invented the game while he worked for the government. Willy said the game didn’t take long to invent and it was a really big hit. Willy regrets that he is more famous for inventing a game then all of his work as a physicist with nuclear and atomic bombs.