Introduction
Even though the computer and the Internet are two of the most significant innovations of our day, few people are aware of their creators. They were not invented by lone geniuses deserving of being singled out on magazine covers or included in the same pantheon as Edison, Bell, and Morse. Instead, collaboration was used to create the majority of digital-age innovations. Many interesting characters—some clever, others downright brilliant—were involved. This essay will discuss the innovators who made video games and the Internet.
Main body
The gaming industry originated in 1962, at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where several members of the Tech Model Railroad Club, led by Steve Russell, on the world’s first computer with an electronic display PDP1 – developed, as a demonstration of the capabilities of this system – the first in video game world (Isaacson, 2015). In general, this is only officially confirmed information about the creation of the world’s first game and whether it was the first – we most likely will never know. Many argue that video games were invented much earlier as a by-product of the Cold War. The official version remains with students from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
The innovative project of Steve Russell declared itself, and all the employees of enterprises where PDP1 was present gathered in crowds and played this game for hours, which naturally harmed their working environment (Isaacson, 2015). Of course, the management of these enterprises demanded that it be removed immediately. However, no matter how popular SPACEWAR! – its popularity covered only a particular circle of people. No one even thought about the fact that it could be sold, except for one person, and his name is Nolan Bushnell.
While in college, he lost a considerable amount of money playing poker, which was supposed to pay for education and to recoup this money – Nolan got a job in an arcade room in an amusement park. At that time, the University of Utah, along with Massachusetts, was one of the leading technical institutions in the United States and one of the few where the very PDP1s stood (Isaacson, 2015). Bushnell, an ordinary student, did not have access to a computer lab, but he had friends who could take him to use the computer at night. There he learned to write in early programming languages. In the late 60s, he and his colleague Ted Dabney agreed with Nutting Associates to create and release the Computer Space arcade machine, in which engineers tried to recreate Spacewar! (Isaacson, 2015) Initially, the game was installed within the company’s market – primarily in bars- and was unsuccessful. Bushnell felt the game needed to be easier to understand and control for the average client. Bushnell analyzed the failure of Computer Space and began to think about creating a new project. This leads to making the Pong game and finding the Atari Corporation. His most successful game has become a game known as Asteroids.
Conclusion
J.C.R. Licklider was crucial in creating the Web, the Internet, and modern mobile technologies. He saw how important a standardized link for computers was. To work on an “Intergalactic Computer Network,” he sought the best personnel (Isaacson, 2015). He was much liked and respected, and he frequently showed extraordinary prescience. Many of the modern Internet’s features—including graphical computers, user-friendly interfaces, digital libraries, e-commerce, online banking, and cloud computing—were defined in his innovative and far-sighted concepts. Dr. Licklider’s persuasive and thorough account of the difficulties in constructing a time-sharing network of computers in 1963 while working as a director at the U.S. Department of Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) was what finally inspired the development of the ARPAnet (Isaacson, 2015). In his 1968 paper, “The Computer as a Communication Device, ” he predicted the potential of computer networks for communications,” which presented his vision of network applications (Isaacson, 2015). Computers had hitherto been viewed primarily as mathematical tools for accelerating computations. In the same year that the ARPAnet was formally shut down, the Internet eventually overtook the ARPAnet.
References
Isaacson, W. (2015). The innovators: How a group of hackers, Geniuses, and geeks created the Digital Revolution. Simon & Schuster.