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