The Video Game Bomb

One of the many things that stood out to me while reading Andrew Ervin's extremely fascinating and entertaining book Bit By Bit about the history of video games and how they have impacted society and the world around us, was the connection that video games had to WWII and particular an infamous secret military project.

The Manhattan Project was not only the name of a little known 80's movie featuring John Lithgow and Christopher Collet about a teenager who builds an atomic bomb but a real-life military project that occurred in WWII. It was the very research and tests that produced the very first working nuclear weapons. And one of the numerous scientists and physicists that lent a hand on this project was the man who would ultimately go on to create what is considered by many to be the first ever video game. Tennis for Two.

The man who eventually built such a momentous invention was Willy Higginbotham. Higginbotham essentially dropped the video game bomb on all of us without us knowing it. His expertise in electronics that was put to use in building the circuitry that would power the first nuke, was invaluable to the birth of one of the fastest growing and financially profitable forms of entertainment today in video games. Tennis for Two was a pretty rudimentary contraption let alone a video game. In essence, it was the precursor to Pong. But the connection it has to one of the most impactful creations in the world is amazing.

Willy Higginbotham was one of the many fathers of nuclear weapons and the devastation and fear that came with them. But he is also the father of one of the most joyous inventions known to man. Video Games. How often does someone help bring to life one invention that has such a lasting impact on our world, let alone two?

Thanks to my reading for this week, I have discovered this man and his accomplishments. And I am richer for it. As is every single person who has ever put in a quarter in the machine at the arcade, or picked up a controller and played till their fingers hurt.

ALL HAIL LORD HIGGINBOTHAM

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