First video game honored at Brookhaven lab birthplace

Retro Tennis for Two on display at the Brookhaven Lab in celebration of its 50th anniversary @ The NY Times…

“I BRAG to people that I was probably the first kid to play a video game,” said Robert Dvorak Jr.

That happened half a century ago here at Brookhaven National Laboratory, where Mr. Dvorak’s father had assembled what was arguably the first video game, called Tennis for Two.

The game, primitive by modern standards, featured two control boxes whose buttons prompted a bright green ball of streaking light to bounce back and forth over a symbolic net. The action took place on a round oscilloscope screen that measured all of five inches across. “It was very simple to operate,” said Mr. Dvorak, now 57 and an electrical engineer in Saugerties.

As a child, Mr. Dvorak periodically tagged along with his father to the laboratory, and he fell in love with the fledgling electronic game on one visit. “I remember it being a lot of fun,” he said.

“When you look at Pong, they’re not all that different,” he said, referring to the 1972 Atari game.

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Video Games – Did They Begin at Brookhaven?