Spacewar!, built on an MIT minicomputer in 1962, became the first video game played on multiple machines

science & techWikipedia1962 · Massachusetts, USA

Spacewar!, built on an MIT minicomputer in 1962, became the first video game played on multiple machines

the gist

Spacewar! was written in 1962 by Steve Russell and a group of MIT students for the newly installed DEC PDP-1 minicomputer. Two players each pilot a spaceship, the needle and the wedge, and dogfight while being pulled by the gravity of a central star, which makes slingshot manoeuvres possible. Ships have limited fuel and ammunition, and can jump to a random point on the screen with a hyperspace feature, which in some versions risks destroying the ship. Because the source code was shared, it spread to many of the few dozen PDP-1 installations, making it the first video game played at multiple computer sites. It inspired the first commercial arcade games, Computer Space and Galaxy Game, both from 1971, and later games such as Asteroids.

how it works

The game ran on the PDP-1's console switches at first, which made controls clumsy. Each ship keeps moving even when no thrust is applied, so players have to plan orbits around the star rather than simply stopping. Using the star's gravity to gain speed is a common tactic that rewards careful flying.

so what

Spacewar! is the ancestor of the commercial games industry: its free sharing of code created the first community of players and developers, and its ideas of physics, fuel and combat recur throughout later video games. In 2007 it was named among the ten most important video games in history and added to the Library of Congress game canon.

the bigger pattern

Spacewar! sits at the start of a pattern in which software spreads as shared code: once it could be copied, the game was recreated on many different machines and gave rise to arcades and the commercial industry.

fun fact

Bob Saunders built one of the first gamepads so players could control the game more easily than with the computer's console switches.

Hampi was once one of the world's largest cities, until its Vijayanagara capital was destroyed in 1565

the gist

Hampi is a UNESCO World Heritage Site in Karnataka, India, with more than 1,600 surviving remains spread over 4,100 hectares. It was the capital of the Vijayanagara Empire from 1336 to 1565. Travellers from Persia and Portugal described it as a prosperous, wealthy and grand city with temples, markets and farms along the Tungabhadra River. By 1500 it was estimated to be the world's second-largest city after Beijing, and probably India's richest at the time. In 1565 a coalition of Muslim sultanates defeated the Vijayanagara Empire, its capital was conquered and destroyed, and the city was left in ruins. Hampi remains a religious centre, with the active Virupaksha Temple at its heart.

how it works

The city was built around a fortified core with temples, markets and water structures along the river, supplied by an extensive network of roads and waterworks. When the empire fell, the city was not rebuilt, so its stone monuments were left standing.

so what

Hampi shows how quickly a great city can vanish after a military defeat, and how a ruined capital can remain sacred. Its ruins give historians a view of medieval South Asia that few other sites can match.

fun fact

The name Hampi comes from Pampa, an old name for the Tungabhadra River.

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia · text CC BY-SA 4.0

Image: Wikimedia Commons

source: Wikipedia ↗

2 min

politicsshortCNA2:01

False allegations about Singapore’s hand in Indonesia’s markets and a made-up meeting

from CNA

CNA Verify has found close to 400 posts pushing falsehoods tying Singapore to Indonesia’s stock market rout and to a secret meeting that never took place. Together, they drew nearly 12 million views, and some were circulated by accounts that appeared to be working in concert, across multiple social media platforms.

Here’s how the disinformation campaign targeting Singapore was uncovered.

on YouTube: CNA ↗