---
title: Happy Birthday to the Xbox's great, great, great, great, great granddaddy | Telos Alliance
description: Clark Novak takes a look back at what is likely the earliest ever video game.
image: https://blogs.telosalliance.com/hubfs/Discrepancy_Sheet/Spacewar.jpg
---

## Happy Birthday to the Xbox's great, great, great, great, great granddaddy | Telos Alliance

By [The Telos Alliance Team](https://blogs.telosalliance.com/author/telos-alliance-team) on Jan 31, 2012 4:22:00 PM

# ![Spacewar](https://blogs.telosalliance.com/hubfs/Discrepancy_Sheet/Spacewar.jpg "Spacewar")Happy Birthday to the Xbox's great, great, great, great, great granddaddy

The brain trust at MIT have been responsible for quite a few innovations over the course of 151 years (1861 being the date of its founding). Famous grads include William Shockley, part of the Bell Labs team that invented the transistor, Ray Tomlinson, who developed e-mail on Arpanet, Bill Hewlett of HP fame, and Bob Metcalf, inventor of Ethernet and founder of 3Com. But this year, another product of an MIT graduate turned 50 years old: the computer game.

It was in 1962 that students Steve Russell, Martin Graetz and Wayne Wiitanen invented [Spacewar!](http://pdp-1.computerhistory.org/pdp-1/?f=theme&s=4&ss=3), the very first graphical computer game, programmed on a DEC PDP-1 in the Computer Science Department at MIT. This, combined with the march of component miniaturization and a logarithmic increase in computing power, led directly to Nolan Bushnell's introduction in 1971 of the first arcade computer game, Computer Space[Space](http://technologizer.com/2011/12/11/computer-space-and-the-dawn-of-the-arcade-video-game/) (seen here). Check out the whole story at [Technologizer](http://technologizer.com/2011/12/11/computer-space-and-the-dawn-of-the-arcade-video-game/) - and if you really want to waste some time, you and a friend can still [play the original Spacewar! code](http://spacewar.oversigma.com/), running on a Java PDP-1 emulator. Just remember to compensate for the gravity well.

*Telos Alliance has led the audio industry’s innovation in Broadcast Audio, Digital Mixing & Mastering, Audio Processors & Compression, Broadcast Mixing Consoles, Audio Interfaces, AoIP & VoIP for over three decades. The Telos Alliance family of products include Telos® Systems, Omnia® Audio, Axia® Audio, Linear Acoustic®, 25-Seven® Systems, Minnetonka™ Audio and Jünger Audio. Covering all ranges of Audio Applications for Radio & Television from Telos Infinity IP Intercom Systems, Jünger Audio AIXpressor Audio Processor, Omnia 11 Radio Processors, Axia Networked Quasar Broadcast Mixing Consoles and Linear Acoustic AMS Audio Quality Loudness Monitoring and 25-Seven TVC-15 Watermark Analyzer & Monitor. Telos Alliance offers audio solutions for any and every Radio, Television, Live Events, Podcast & Live Streaming Studio With Telos Alliance “Broadcast Without Limits.”*

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