The Spark

Brief History of Computer Games 1850's - 1950's

The history of computer games can be traced as far back as the war slung post world war britain labelled commonly as the 'Dark Ages' of the 1850's, computers of this era are a mere fraction of ability in relation to the machines of today, Computers of the 1850's , A realisation of master mathematicians, The first realisation of a concept of 'microcomputing' was adapted from the process of calculations.

In 1822 Charles Babbage developed the concept of the 'Difference engine', a piece of machinery which   would calculate multiple sets of numbers as well as hard printing onto a material, This system would have proved useful as this system was more accurate and much quicker than the current order in place of a human team of mathematicians. However the concept was never actually created, the machine was               designed but never constructed at the time however the difference machine was actually commissioned and fully built a whopping 143 years after Babbage's death, Built in 2002. In the flesh the machine itself is an impressive feat accomplished the machine stands 11ft high and consists of 8,000 parts.

Designed by tommy flowers, machine used in world war II to break code

Moving Onwards down the timeline we skip down to 1943 computing hadn't developed a whole much world war one and world war two have came and gone, Computers of this time were predominantly possessions of the military designed to break code an example of which is the Colossus (image below) which served as code breaker in british hands during world war II and was the world's first ever programmable digital computer. These large installations were sometimes large enough to fill whole rooms these machines, To todays standards these machines were hardly a fraction of our current processing abilities looking back down to the 1800s it's still a technical achievement but we still aren't any nearer to our benchmark of today. 

< This lady is a programmer, so cool!!!!

Women served a huge role in the history of computing. Women played a large role in the development of computing and were on the front line when it came to maintaining and running these mainframes but were sadly the un-song song of their time, with impacts back to 1800s. Augusta Ada King was a woman who is most well known for writing a concept similar to Charles Babbage's Difference engine as time moved on 100 years later her death in 1953 was recognised for her description of a computer and software.  On December 10 1980, (Which was Ada's birthday) The U.S department gave the go ahead for there new programming language and named it after 'Ada', Which is an amazing thing.










Nearing the end of the era in 1962 we enter a more familiar realm of life. 'Spacewar!' the invention of the first ever computer games comes to your screen! well, those who could afford it that is, The actually two player 'Spacewar' was made by 'Stevel Russell' put you against your friend in an attempt to let you destroy each other! Little did they know they had 'spawned' a whole new industry.






Reference:https://www.cs.bris.ac.uk/admissions/what_is_cs/FamousWomen.html
http://www.computerhistory.org/babbage/
http://femtechnet.newschool.edu/docs/women-in-computing-history-overview/
http://www.sciencemuseum.org.uk/onlinestuff/stories/babbage.aspx
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Babbage (I'm sorry it's wikipedia)
http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/historic_figures/babbage_charles.shtml
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Difference_engine