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It may seem like video games have been around forever, but less than a century ago, if you told someone that there would be a way to play interactive games on your TV screen, they would look at you like you just escaped from the local looney bin?  Thats right, there was a time....WITHOUT VIDEO GAMES! Can you imagine the dangerous levels of productivity!

Anyway, in 1952, a Cambridge University professor named A.S. Douglas created the world's first video game: OXO.  This game was a tic-tac-toe simulator where the player plays against the computer.  6 years later-in 1958,
William Higinbotham created the world's second video game -Tennis for Two.  The game used an oscillioscope and an analog computer.  The game was a tennis simulator that was created at Brookhaven National Laboratory to entertain vistiors.   The first arcade game, Pong, which was created by Atari in 1972, was very similar to Tennis for Two.  The main differences between the two games was that they used different angles, and Pong was much more widely distributed.  Also, the first home video game console-the Magnavox Odyssey-was released that same year.  This marked the beginning of the first generation of video game consoles-the generation featuring the early consoles, sometimes referred to as "pong consoles", as the games were in the style of pong.  Also, in 1976, the first second generation gaming console-the Fairchild Video Entertainment System (later renamed Fairchild Channel F), was released to the public.  Little did anyone know how much video games would evolve over the next 41 years...


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