What was the first video game ever?
In the fall of 1958, while the world was caught up in the Cold War and space race, something entirely unexpected was happening in a quiet corner of Brookhaven National Laboratory. Amid the bustling atmosphere of scientific research, **William Higinbotham**, a physicist who had once worked on the Manhattan Project, was preparing to unveil what would unknowingly become the world’s **first video game**.
Born in 1910 in Bridgeport, Connecticut, Higinbotham was no stranger to cutting-edge technology. After working on radar displays during World War II and designing crucial systems for the atomic bomb, he was now leading Brookhaven’s Instrumentation Group. However, this time, his project was different—far removed from the bombs and tech that defined much of his career. It was a simple yet groundbreaking idea: **Tennis for Two**, a game that would forever alter the course of entertainment.
At the time, Brookhaven held annual open houses, showcasing scientific achievements to the public. But Higinbotham noticed something—many of the scientific displays were dry, too technical to engage the everyday visitor. So he came up with an idea that would not only captivate the audience but also bring science closer to their lives: **an interactive tennis game displayed on an oscilloscope**.
With a small analog computer and an oscilloscope that could mimic the motion of a bouncing ball, Higinbotham and his technician, Robert Dvorak, crafted the game in just a few weeks. What they created was deceptively simple—a **two-player game** where each participant could hit a ball back and forth by turning a knob and pressing a button. The court was a mere pair of lines on the screen, and the ball was a glowing dot. But the game was mesmerizing. As the ball sailed across the screen, the crowd became captivated.
When Higinbotham debuted Tennis for Two at the 1958 open house, visitors flocked to it. Long lines of eager players snaked through the lab, waiting for their chance to try the game. The experience was unlike anything they had seen before. Players could tweak the angle of their shots, send the ball flying over the net, and even enjoy the satisfying physics of a ball bouncing on the court. For an afternoon, scientists and the public alike marveled at what seemed like **magic in the making**.
Higinbotham, however, didn’t see it that way. For him, it was just another exhibit, a fun demonstration of the lab’s technology. He enhanced it the following year by introducing larger screens and a gravity adjustment feature—allowing players to experience tennis on the Moon, Earth, or even Jupiter. But after two years, the oscilloscope was repurposed, and Tennis for Two faded into obscurity.
What makes this story truly remarkable is that **Higinbotham didn’t realize the magnitude of what he had created**. At a time when computers were giant, clunky machines, the idea of interactive entertainment was almost unimaginable. Despite his deep background in technology, Higinbotham never saw video games as the revolutionary force they would later become. He dismissed the long lines of players at the Brookhaven exhibit as a sign of other displays being dull, not his creation being ahead of its time.
By the 1970s, when **Pong** hit arcades and **home video game systems** began to dominate living rooms, Higinbotham’s contribution was all but forgotten. It wasn’t until a legal battle over video game patents in the 1970s that his role was rediscovered, when he was called to testify about his earlier work. But by then, video games were already a cultural force of their own.
Higinbotham’s legacy is bittersweet. Though he helped usher in an entire industry, he is often more remembered for his contributions to **nuclear arms control**, serving as one of the founders of the Federation of American Scientists. Yet, the seeds he planted in 1958 with Tennis for Two grew into an entertainment industry worth billions—an industry that now captures the imaginations of millions of people around the world. **Inadvertently, William Higinbotham had given birth to the video game**.