Tennis For Two - The second ever computer game

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Way back in 1958, William Higinbotham invented Tennis For Two to liven up visitor day at Brookhaven National Laboratory, his workplace. The game uses an oscilloscope with two control pads. It remained largely unknown until 1981 when a lawyer trying to break Magnavox's patent for video games came across writings talking about the game.

Blueprints of it were found to predate Magnavox's game, the case was settled out of court, and the game found fame as the second ever invented, since it was later predated by A.S. Douglas' 'OXO' game from 1952.

The video is sourced from Brookhaven National Laboratory, a governmental institution, and as such, the video is in public domain. Peacespeakers' music is released under a Creative Commons license. You can see a video of theirs here:



Edit: I've been asked quite a few times what music this is. It's 'To Find Our Freedom' by Peacespeakers, from the album 'Message From Planet Earth'. Their web page can also be found here:



Channel: Entertainment
Uploaded: May 18, 2007 at 8:12 pm
Author: dancraggs

Length: 00:02:13
Rating: 4.88
Views: 191396

Tags: video game games tennis for two oscilloscope science laboratory oxo first electronics

Video Comments:
erkkiesa0 (November 18, 2008 at 1:15 pm)
Both fail. This isn't the 1st neither the 2nd.

And the rocket simulator was in 1947.

There was couple of games before this one, like NIMROD and OXO.
Glumglufs (November 17, 2008 at 5:17 pm)
What happened to it after they took it away?
Imsirovic94 (November 15, 2008 at 8:15 pm)
lol
ciera098 (November 15, 2008 at 5:08 pm)
this is the first game ever. not the second
renzograph (November 16, 2008 at 10:26 am)
fail, this second game...
first game is Rocket simulator by Thomas Goldsmith in 1942
Someone0like0me (November 14, 2008 at 1:59 am)
-9 thunbs.. owned
Someone0like0me (November 14, 2008 at 1:57 am)
wow u did?!?! tell me more about it O_O seriously were you played it?and how did you got access to it?
bklynsouth (November 14, 2008 at 3:12 am)
Back in HS in the early 70's. Our science teacher set it up and we played during class, it was cool, but we only had 40 minutes and about 16 kids who wanted to play.
Someone0like0me (November 14, 2008 at 3:15 am)
Oh i see- did it had scores or anything?was it a big console?i never got to see the console
bklynsouth (November 14, 2008 at 3:24 am)
No score on this one in school, but later Atari came out with one and it had a scoreboard. If you moved the knob just right you could be some back spin the orb and make it hit four walss and confused the other player. The only problem was if you played it long enough you kinda firgure it out and than like anything that was new, it became old and than we went out to the school yard to play stickball.