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As an avid retro-gamer, for quite a long time I’ve been particularly interested in the history of video games. To become more specific, a topic that I’m very passionate about is “Which was the first gaming ever made?”… So, I started an exhaustive investigation on this subject (and causeing this to be article the first one in a series of articles that will cover in detail all video gaming history).

The question was: Which was the first gaming ever made?

The answer: Well, as lots of things in life, there is no easy response to that question. It depends all on your own definition of the word “gaming”. For instance: When you talk about “the first gaming”, can you mean the first gaming that has been commercially-made, or the initial console game, or maybe the first digitally programmed game? Because of this, I made a listing of 4-5 video games that in a single way or another were the beginners of the gambling industry. You will notice that the first video games were not created with the idea of getting any benefit from them (back in those decades there was no Nintendo, Sony, Microsoft, Sega, Atari, or any other video game company around). In fact, the sole notion of a “gaming” or an electric device that was only made for “playing games and having fun” was above the imagination of over 99% of the populace back in those days. But lido88 to this small band of geniuses who walked the first steps into the gambling revolution, we are able to enjoy several hours of fun and entertainment today (keeping aside the creation of an incredible number of jobs during the past four or five 5 decades). Without further ado, here I present the “first video game nominees”:

1940s: Cathode Ray Tube Amusement Device

This is considered (with official documentation) as the first electronic game device available. It was developed by Thomas T. Goldsmith Jr. and Estle Ray Mann. The overall game was assembled in the 1940s and submitted for an US Patent in January 1947. The patent was granted December 1948, which also helps it be the initial electronic game device to ever receive a patent (US Patent 2,455,992). As described in the patent, it was an analog circuit device with an array of knobs used to go a dot that appeared in the cathode ray tube display. This game was inspired by how missiles appeared in WWII radars, and the thing of the overall game was simply controlling a “missile” to be able to hit a target. In the 1940s it was extremely difficult (for not saying impossible) to show graphics in a Cathode Ray Tube display. Due to this, only the specific “missile” appeared on the display. The prospective and any graphics were showed on screen overlays manually placed on the display screen. It has been said by many that Atari’s famous video game “Missile Command” was created after this gaming device.

1951: NIMROD

NIMROD was the name of a digital computer device from the 50s decade. The creators of the computer were the engineers of an UK-based company beneath the name Ferranti, with the thought of displaying these devices at the 1951 Festival of Britain (and later it was also showed in Berlin).

NIM is really a two-player numerical game of strategy, which is believed to come originally from the ancient China. The guidelines of NIM are easy: There are a certain number of groups (or “heaps”), and each group includes a certain number of objects (a common starting array of NIM is 3 heaps containing 3, 4, and 5 objects respectively). Each player take turns removing objects from the heaps, but all removed objects should be from a single heap and a minumum of one object is removed. The player to take the last object from the final heap loses, however there is a variation of the overall game where the player to take the final object of the final heap wins.