1950 – 1970 History of Computer Games

In the 1950 – 1970 era, Computer Games were very simple and Arcade based which catered to the majority of gaming niches plausible for any casual player to pick up.
Computer games originated in the late 1940s using a Cathode ray tube (Vacuum tube) used in TV sets.  Scientists Thomas T Goldsmith Jr and Esle Ray Mann designed a simple electronic game inspired by World War II radar displays to accommodate this in 1947 filing a patent.
Due to equipment costs and various circumstances the Amusement Device was never released to the marketplace.

In 1951, Ralph Baer a TV Engineer at Loral, was asked to produce a new TV Set design for his Boss,  Ralph had broader ideas for his concept adding  playable games to the television set.
Sam Lackoff, Ralphs Boss did not comprehend this idea and was dismissed. 1952 a guy named Douglas with a Degree background from Cambridge wrote his thesis on Human Computer Interaction.
Douglas illustrated this with a graphic Tic-Tac-Toe game, even though people do not relate to this as “real video game” It still stands to be the first design to hit a playable computer screen.

In 1958 an Engineer from Brookhaven National Laboratories Willy Higginbotham produced a game using an oscilloscope and analog computer called Tennis For Two based on two hand controls.
Due to the lab equipment expenses the game got dismantled after two years to be reused In Labs, but was later remade in 1997 for the 50^th anniversary of BNL.

 

In 1961 three students from Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) programmed a game titled Space war on the DEC PDP-1 computer.
Martin Graetz, Stephen Russell and Wayne Wiitanen a hard core group of computer nerds called themselves the ‘Tech Model Raidroad Club’ between them they developed the idea of two spaceships with limited fuel supplies battling against each other in a missile duel. 
The game was eventually distributed with the new DEC computers and traded throughout the internet crediting as the first influential computer game.

 

In September 1966 Ralph came back to his concept Idea from 1951 of playing video games on a TV Set and began building several prototypes one of them being ‘Chase Game’.
Debate has being immersing for several years on who invented the video game?
Ralph Baer is accordingly credited as the inventor of the first video game.

In 1969 Ken Thompson wrote a game called Space Travel who was programmed by Jeremy Ben from AT&IT for the Multics operating system. The game was simulated to travel in the solar system; development shows this game spurred the evolution of the Unix operating system.
The Significance of each Inventor changes from there background identity, knowledge, equipment and resources available in that era.
Scientists In 1947 based there game upon Scientific formulas using diagrams of voltage, making logical decisions based on a set of algorithms. Degree background and Industry based commercial companies produce different results as there mind set differs and provides different out-comes.

Bibliographyhttp://www.pong-story.com/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_computer_and_video_games

http://www.jesperjuul.net/thesis/2-historyofthecomputergame.html

http://inventors.about.com/library/inventors/blcomputer_videogames.htm

http://www.designboom.com/eng/education/pong.html