SpaceWar! on PDP-1
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Software & Languages
MIT students Slug Russell, Shag Graetz, and Alan Kotok wrote SpaceWar!,
considered the first interactive computer game. First played at MIT on DEC's
PDP-1, the large-scope display featured interactive, shoot'em-up graphics that
inspired future video games. Dueling players fired at each other's spaceships
and used early versions of joysticks to manipulate away from the central
gravitational force of a sun as well as from the enemy ship.
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Components
Virtual memory emerged from a team under the direction of Tom Kilburn at the
University of Manchester. Virtual memory permitted a computer to use its
storage capacity to run outside software and switch rapidly among multiple
programs.
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Clark with LINC-8
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Computers
The LINC (Laboratory Instrumentation Computer) offered the first real time
laboratory data processing. Designed by Wesley Clark at Lincoln Laboratories,
Digital Equipment Corp. later commercialized it as the LINC-8.
Research faculty came to a workshop at MIT to build their own machines, most of
which they used in biomedical studies. DEC supplied components.
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Fairchild NPN transistor
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Components
Fairchild Camera and Instrument Corp. produced the first widely accepted
epitaxial gold-doped NPN transistor. The NPN transistor served as the industry
workhouse for discrete logic.
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