The Dawn of Video Games: Crash Course Games #3

Over the next few episodes, we’re going to talk about the history of video games. Today, we’re going to start with the first re-programmable computers in the 1940s. Now, these computers were serious tools. They were for codebreaking and calculating artillery tables during World War II – but like most tools we humans use, we eventually looked for ways to make them playthings. And over the next three decades, the advances in computer technology and the tentative curiosity of many engineers and programmers would inspire a new culture and eventually the first true coin-operated video game in 1971.

You can play SpaceWar! yourself here:
http://www.masswerk.at/spacewar/