Steve Russell | |
|---|---|
 Russell in 2011 | |
| Born | Stephen Russell 1937 (age 86–87) [1] Hartford, Connecticut, U.S. |
| Other names | Slug |
| Alma mater | Dartmouth College |
| Known for | Spacewar! Lisp |
| Scientific career | |
| Fields | Computer science |
| Institutions | MIT |
Stephen Russell (born 1937), [1] also nicknamed "Slug", [1] is an American computer scientist most famous for creating Spacewar! , well known for being the first widely distributed video game.
Born in Hartford, Connecticut, [1] Russell attended Dartmouth College in Hanover, New Hampshire, from 1954 to 1958.
Russell wrote the first two implementations of the programming language Lisp for the IBM 704 mainframe computer. It was Russell who realized that the concept of universal functions could be applied to the language. By implementing the Lisp universal evaluator in a lower-level language, it became possible to create the Lisp interpreter; prior development work on the language had focused on compiling the language. [2] He invented the continuation to solve a double recursion problem for one of the users of his Lisp implementation. [3]
In 1962, Russell created and designed Spacewar! , with the fellow members of the Tech Model Railroad Club at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), working on a Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) PDP-1 minicomputer. [4] [5] [6] Spacewar! is widely considered to be the first digital video game [7] [8] and served as a foundation for the entire video game industry. [9]
He later served as an executive of Computer Center Corporation (nicknamed C-Cubed), a small time-sharing company in Washington (state). In 1968, he mentored Bill Gates and Paul Allen on the use of the DEC PDP-10 mainframe, while they were part of the programming group of Lakeside School (Seattle). [10] [11]
Lisp is a family of programming languages with a long history and a distinctive, fully parenthesized prefix notation. Originally specified in 1960, it is the third-oldest high-level programming language still in common use, after Fortran and COBOL. Lisp has changed since its early days, and many dialects have existed over its history. Today, the best-known general-purpose Lisp dialects are Common Lisp, Scheme, Racket, and Clojure.
Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC)'s PDP-10, later marketed as the DECsystem-10, is a mainframe computer family manufactured beginning in 1966 and discontinued in 1983. 1970s models and beyond were marketed under the DECsystem-10 name, especially as the TOPS-10 operating system became widely used.
Programmed Data Processor (PDP), referred to by some customers, media and authors as "Programmable Data Processor," is a term used by the Digital Equipment Corporation from 1957 to 1990 for several lines of minicomputers.
The PDP-1 is the first computer in Digital Equipment Corporation's PDP series and was first produced in 1959. It is famous for being the most important computer in the creation of hacker culture at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Bolt, Beranek and Newman and elsewhere. The PDP-1 is the original hardware for playing history's first game on a minicomputer, Steve Russell's Spacewar!
Symbolics, Inc., was a privately held American computer manufacturer that acquired the assets of the former company and continues to sell and maintain the Open Genera Lisp system and the Macsyma computer algebra system.
The PDP-6, short for Programmed Data Processor model 6, is a computer developed by Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) during 1963 and first delivered in the summer of 1964. It was an expansion of DEC's existing 18-bit systems to use a 36-bit data word, which was at that time a common word size for large machines like IBM mainframes. The system was constructed using the same germanium transistor-based System Module layout as DEC's earlier machines, like the PDP-1 and PDP-4.
Computer Space is a space combat arcade video game released in 1971. Created by Nolan Bushnell and Ted Dabney in partnership as Syzygy Engineering, it was the first arcade video game as well as the first commercially available video game. Computer Space is a derivative of the 1962 computer game Spacewar!, which is possibly the first video game to spread to multiple computer installations. It features a rocket controlled by the player engaged in a missile battle with a pair of hardware-controlled flying saucers set against a starfield background. The goal is to score more hits than the enemy spaceships within a set time period, which awards a free round of gameplay. The game is enclosed in a custom fiberglass cabinet, which Bushnell designed to look futuristic.
Star Trek is a text-based strategy video game based on the Star Trek television series (1966–69) and originally released in 1971. In the game, the player commands the USS Enterprise on a mission to hunt down and destroy an invading fleet of Klingon warships. The player travels through the 64 quadrants of the galaxy to attack enemy ships with phasers and photon torpedoes in turn-based battles and refuel at starbases. The goal is to eliminate all enemies within a random time limit.
In computer programming, Franz Lisp is a discontinued Lisp programming language system written at the University of California, Berkeley by Professor Richard Fateman and several students, based largely on Maclisp and distributed with the Berkeley Software Distribution (BSD) for the Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) VAX minicomputer. Piggybacking on the popularity of the BSD package, Franz Lisp was probably the most widely distributed and used Lisp system of the 1970s and 1980s.
Mac Hack is a computer chess program written by Richard D. Greenblatt. Also known as Mac Hac and The Greenblatt Chess Program, it was developed at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Mac Hack VI was the first chess program to play in human tournament conditions, the first to be granted a chess rating, and the first to win against a person in tournament play. A pseudocode for the program is given in Figure 11.16 of.
Alan Kotok was an American computer scientist known for his work at Digital Equipment Corporation and at the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). Steven Levy, in his book Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution, describes Kotok and his classmates at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) as the first true hackers.
Spacewar! is a space combat video game developed in 1962 by Steve Russell in collaboration with Martin Graetz, Wayne Wiitanen, Bob Saunders, Steve Piner, and others. It was written for the newly installed DEC PDP-1 minicomputer at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. After its initial creation, Spacewar! was expanded further by other students and employees of universities in the area, including Dan Edwards and Peter Samson. It was also spread to many of the few dozen installations of the PDP-1 computer, making Spacewar! the first known video game to be played at multiple computer installations.
Peter R. Samson is an American computer scientist, best known for creating pioneering computer software for the TX-0 and PDP-1.
Galaxy Game is a space combat arcade game developed in 1971 during the early era of video games. Galaxy Game is an expanded version of the 1962 Spacewar!, potentially the first video game to spread to multiple computer installations. It features two spaceships, "the needle" and "the wedge", engaged in a dogfight while maneuvering in the gravity well of a star. Both ships are controlled by human players.
New Implementation of LISP (NIL) is a programming language, a dialect of the language Lisp, developed at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) during the 1970s, and intended to be the successor to the language Maclisp. It is a 32-bit implementation, and was in part a response to Digital Equipment Corporation's (DEC) VAX computer. The project was headed by Jon L White, with a stated goal of maintaining compatibility with MacLisp while fixing many of its problems.
T-Square is an early drafting program written by Peter Samson assisted by Alan Kotok and possibly Robert A. Saunders while they were students at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and members of the Tech Model Railroad Club.
The history of video games spans a period of time between the invention of the first electronic games and today, covering many inventions and developments. Video gaming reached mainstream popularity in the 1970s and 1980s, when arcade video games, gaming consoles and home computer games were introduced to the general public. Since then, video gaming has become a popular form of entertainment and a part of modern culture in most parts of the world. The early history of video games, therefore, covers the period of time between the first interactive electronic game with an electronic display in 1947, the first true video games in the early 1950s, and the rise of early arcade video games in the 1970s. During this time there was a wide range of devices and inventions corresponding with large advances in computing technology, and the actual first video game is dependent on the definition of "video game" used.
The history of the programming language Scheme begins with the development of earlier members of the Lisp family of languages during the second half of the twentieth century. During the design and development period of Scheme, language designers Guy L. Steele and Gerald Jay Sussman released an influential series of Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) AI Memos known as the Lambda Papers (1975–1980). This resulted in the growth of popularity in the language and the era of standardization from 1990 onward. Much of the history of Scheme has been documented by the developers themselves.
Mainframe computers are computers used primarily by businesses and academic institutions for large-scale processes. Before personal computers, first termed microcomputers, became widely available to the general public in the 1970s, the computing industry was composed of mainframe computers and the relatively smaller and cheaper minicomputer variant. During the mid to late 1960s, many early video games were programmed on these computers. Developed prior to the rise of the commercial video game industry in the early 1970s, these early mainframe games were generally written by students or employees at large corporations in a machine or assembly language that could only be understood by the specific machine or computer type they were developed on. While many of these games were lost as older computers were discontinued, some of them were ported to high-level computer languages like BASIC, had expanded versions later released for personal computers, or were recreated for bulletin board systems years later, thus influencing future games and developers.
Robert Alan Saunders is an American computer scientist, most famous for being an influential computer programmer. Saunders joined the Tech Model Railroad Club (TMRC) led by Alan Kotok, Peter Samson, and himself. They then met Marvin Minsky and other influential pioneers in what was then known as Artificial Intelligence.
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