Vintage Game Consoles

Preface: The Birth of Videogames

Living in a society so dependent on smartphones, laptops, and the Internet, it can be difficult to remember when videogames and computers were pure science fiction. Yet, just over four decades ago, videogames were as futuristic as holodecks and hoverboards are today. Just imagine how miraculous a Wii U would have seemed back in 1952, when one of the world’s first videogame players—a group of highly trained engineers—hunched around a room-sized Electronic Delay Storage Automatic Computer (EDSAC) to challenge the lumbering beast to a round of tic-tac-toe. Although no one could have predicted it at the time, these humble videogames were the first glimpses of a phenomenon that would change the way the world played. ...