What is the world’s first video game?

Born in 1910 in Bridgeport, Connecticut, Higinbotham worked at the Los Alamos Laboratory during World War II, where he contributed to the development of electronics for the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945, according to IFLScience.

After the war, he co-founded the Federation of American Scientists, a nuclear nonproliferation group, and continued his career at the Brookhaven National Laboratory (BNL). It was here that Higinbotham created Tennis for Two, the first video game as we understand them today, designed for a public exhibition at BNL.

The exhibition largely featured static displays, but Higinbotham sought to engage the audience. "It might liven up the place to have a game that people could play," he wrote, per the Brookhaven National Laboratory, "and which would convey the message that our scientific endeavors have relevance for society."

Two people playing on a game console. Photo by Pexels

Using the lab’s Doner Model 30 analog computer, which could simulate a bouncing ball with wind resistance, he laid the foundation for Tennis for Two. In just three weeks, Higinbotham and technician Robert V. Dvorak assembled a machine with an oscilloscope display showing a side view of a tennis court. Players used custom controllers, a dial to control the angle of the shot and a button to hit the ball back and forth.

"Tennis for Two" debuted on Oct. 18, 1958, and quickly gained popularity with exhibition visitors, Comicbook.com reported. However, the game was dismantled in 1959 so its components could be repurposed for other projects at the lab. For many years, it remained largely forgotten until it was brought into the spotlight during a court case in the late 1970s.

Prior to Tennis for Two, earlier games were mostly developed for research or to demonstrate the capabilities of analog computers. Pong, developed by Atari over a decade later, is often considered the first widely popular video game, but it was not the first. According to The Museum of Play, Pong was the first video game to capture "wide-scale public attention."

Nolan Bushnell, Atari’s founder, came up with the idea for Pong, which was released in 1972 as an arcade game. In 1975, Atari launched a home version, paving the way for iconic games like Pac-Man and Mario, according to USA Today. In 1976, Bushnell rejected Steve Jobs' offer to buy a third of Apple for US$50,000, a stake that would now be valued at nearly $1 trillion, according to Fortune.

Higinbotham, who passed away in 1994, wished to be remembered for his work on radar displays and nuclear nonproliferation. According to BNL, his creation of Tennis for Two stands as a key milestone in the history of video gaming, demonstrating that games could be made not just for scientific purposes but for pure enjoyment.