The First Video Game Came Long Before Pong and Was Invented by a Manhattan Project Physicist
4th January 2026
In 1971, the world got its first look at an arcade machine, playing the little-remembered space combat game Computer Space. A year later, we got the all-time classic Pong in arcade machine form, and the first ever home console, the Magnavox Odyssey.
In the decades preceding, researchers at various institutes created several experimental games, which paved the way for these commercial successes that spawned a ~$189 billion industry. But the games were not the first to be created. The game widely considered the first true computer game, as it was made for entertainment purposes only, was created by American physicist William Higinbotham in 1958.
Pooh. In 1970 I was playing a space-invaders type game on the CATTC NTDS computers on the USS John F. Kennedy (CVA-67) in Norfolk, Virginia. Our DS personnel were bored, and so….