2014-04-26 14:52:28 +00:00
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SPACEWAR
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2014-04-26 15:54:15 +00:00
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n. A space-combat simulation game, inspired by E. E. Doc Smith's Lensman
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books, in which two spaceships duel around a central sun, shooting torpedoes
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at each other and jumping through hyperspace. This game was first
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implemented on the PDP-1 at MIT in 1962. In 1968-69, a descendant of the
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game motivated Ken Thompson to build, in his spare time on a scavenged
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PDP-7, the operating system that became Unix. Less than nine years after
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that, SPACEWAR was commercialized as one of the first video games;
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descendants are still feep ing in video arcades everywhere.
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