Who created Tennis for Two, the 1958 computer game often cited as an early video game?

William Higinbotham created Tennis for Two in 1958, an early computer game that simulated a tennis match.

Higinbotham built the game for the annual visitor exhibition at Brookhaven National Laboratory in New York. It used an analog Donner Model 30 computer and displayed the ball’s path on an oscilloscope. Players controlled the ball’s angle with knobs and struck it using buttons.

Tennis for Two is often discussed alongside Spacewar! and the 1952 OXO program in histories of video games. It was designed as an entertaining scientific demonstration rather than a commercial product. Higinbotham was a nuclear physicist who had also worked on instrumentation for the Manhattan Project.

The game disappeared after the exhibition and was not preserved as a working machine. Its historical importance comes from its interactive graphics, physics simulation, and two-player design, all presented years before home consoles became common.