WHEN	WHERE	WHAT	WHO	PHOTO	THE STORY
1958	Brookhaven National Laboratory Upton, NY	TENNIS FOR TWO	William Higinbotham		Was created for BNL open houses to wow visitors (and continue to get funding). Displays the trajectory of a ball on a oscilloscope, with which users can interact. Controllers had a dial and a button. The dials affect the angle of the ball and the buttons "hit" the ball. After it was displayed to the public it was dismantled. It was neither marketed or patented, because William thought the idea too obvious to be worth pursuing.
1961	MIT Cambridge, MA	COMPUTER SPACE	Steve Russell		MIT gets a new super computer, the Digital Equipment Corporation PDP-1, and similar to BNL, wants to create a program that will show off the computer and wow visitors at open houses. They develop an idea to simluate two spaceships have a missle battle in space. It becomes a huge hit in the computer community, and copies are passed educational facilities across the US. Again, no patent was pursued and thus was copied over and over again.
1966	Sanders Associates Nashua, New Hampshire	ODYSSEY	Ralph Baer		Baer, a television engineer and electrical engineer comes up with an "interactive TV" concept. He writes a paper describing a low cost device that can attach to a TV set and play a number of games. In 1966, wtih Sanders Asociates, he creates a tag game with two dots that can be moved around on a TV. In 1968 Baer files for the first videogame patent showing a system that plays ping-pong, volleyball, hockey and a shooting game used with a light-gun. Magnavox picks it up, and sells it for an expensive $100, which only works on Magnavox TVs. Recieves a settlement w/Atari after PONG is created because of its patent.
1971	Nutting Associates Mountain View, CA	COMPUTER SPACE / PONG	Nolan Bushnell		Bushnell incessantly plays Spacewar on the University of Utah's PDP-1 and becomes convinced of Spacewar's commercial viability. Becomes obsessed with creating a compact version for public consumption. He joins Nutting Associates, who make coin operated Trivia games and makes 1,500 units. It sells terribly, because its too difficult for people to learn the controls. After seeing the Odyssey at a trade show, Bushnell goes on to create an arcade version of Pong, forming the company Atari.

The History of Video Games
[ The Discovery Channel - Google Video - ~47 min ]