Thank you for this. I never heard of Hutspiel, Project Simulator nor the Goodyear Electronic Differential Analyzer. Also I'm glad to find https://videogamehistorian.wordpress.com And this article https://videogamehistorian.wordpress.com/tag/rand-corporation/ This is great stuff. On Wed, Jan 26, 2022 at 8:58 PM ☼ wil lindsay ☼ via vcf-midatlantic <vcf-midatlantic@lists.vcfed.org> wrote:
This came across the game-history feed that is my inbox. I'm not sure if folks follow this list, but here is another interesting female contribution to computer history:
https://if50.substack.com/p/hutspiel-and-dr-dorothy-k-clark
For those looking for the quick summary: One of the many examples pointed to recently as "the first computer game" is a 2-player military simulation called "HUTSPIEL" that ran on the Goodyear Electronic Differential Engine (circa 1955). The real news here is that a recent tour through paper archives uncovered that the game was designed by Dr. Dorothy K. Clark. I'm rather taken with the image in the article of two people playing the game by reading output from ammeters. --not your typical game interface!