Thanks to the work of some talented engineers, visitors to NYC’s Brookhaven Lab will be able to play one of the first electronic games as it was originally presented. Brookhaven engineer Willy Higinbotham created Tennis For Two, a rudimentary bouncing-ball demonstration, using an oscilloscope and a Donner Model 30 vacuum tube analog computer in 1958. In 1997, Brookhaven staff restored the game for its 40th anniversary, but had to use a solid-state computer, which was imperfect. Now, having acquired a later-model Donner computer, the staff is about to finish restoring “Tennis For Two” to a more period-accurate state. Physicist Peter Takacs writes in a blog post that the restoration will be available soon — pending the OK from Brookhaven’s electrical safety inspector. “Tennis For Two,” dismantled shortly after that 1958 demo, was for a time considered by many to be the first videogame, although later research turned up several similar, earlier projects.
