[game_preservation] National Game Registry Blog

[Billy Cain]

Kind of on topic, and kind of not...

Does anyone know the first time that "interactive" was used to describe a
video game?

On Thu, Dec 17, 2009 at 6:28 PM, Devin Monnens <dmonnens at gmail.com> wrote:


> Yah, that stuff was written some time ago.  It could have been Ralph

>> simply wasn't aware of Ted's contributions at the time.

>>

>

> That seems the logical conclusion, yes. Memory is slushy.

>

>

>> It just so happens that Lexington HS in Massachusetts was the very

>>

> fist installation of this system (with the second being Northern

>> Arizona University).  No surprise, since Lexington was the

>> headquarters of DECUS and of course Massachusetts was where DEC was

>> located as well.

>

>

> Yeah, that makes a lot of sense now. I suppose it would be best to know how

> the classes were conducted as well. But timesharing vs. ownership I don't

> think makes too big of a difference for high school programming classes

> because in either case the students are learning to code.

>

>

>>

>> Yes, Focal of course shares similarities with BASIC.  And a lot of the

>> GE systems ran Dartmouth BASIC afaik.  What I find more interesting is

>> the claim in the comments area of the lunar lander article that

>> someone played an earlier interpretation of it in a GE mainframe

>> running Dartmouth BASIC in '67.

>>

>

> Yeah, I just read that now that you mentioned. I would take that claim with

> a grain of salt, but it's certainly worth investigating. My guess is he

> mistyped the date or misremembered. We hadn't even tested the lunar module

> until 1968, so I don't think there would have been enough data at the time

> to build a game on landing on the moon. I'm not saying it's completely

> impossible, but he'd need some physical evidence to back that up. December

> 1969 seems like a more logical date.

>

>

>>

>> http://pdp-8.org/scans/an/decus-focal8/decus-focal8-169.pdf

>>

>> Published Feb. 26th, 1971.

>>

>

> Hey, this has an interesting reference in it as well:

>

> 1 - Computer De-cis-ion s

> Acknowledgements

> Computer Games Section

> March 1970 Page1 5

> Article by Dennis Van Tassel

>

> So this dates the artillery game the FOCAL version was based off. It also

> brings up an interesting source that now needs to be tracked down. Computer

> Decisions is a journal, but none of my libraries have a copy form 1970.

> Prospector (which searches university libraries in the CO area) doesn't have

> a single library with one from that year (earliest is Sept 1970). I wonder

> if anyone here has a copy...

>

> Can't find digital copies, but holy cow, look at this guy's bookshelf:

>

> http://www.vintage-computer.com/magazines.shtml

>

> <http://www.vintage-computer.com/magazines.shtml>

>

> --

> Devin Monnens

> www.deserthat.com

>

> The sleep of Reason produces monsters.

>

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>



-- 
Billy Cain
Geek / Catalyst

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