William Alfred Higinbotham: Scientist, Activist, and Computer Game Pioneer
Kristen J. Nyitray · IEEE Annals of the History of Computing · 2011
William Alfred Higinbotham designed Tennis for Two, the first computer game to display motion and allow interactive control with handheld controllers, to lure visitors over to the display of the instrumentation division for attendees at a Brookhaven National Laboratory (BNL)visitors' day in 1958. For Higinbotham, this was just an isolated incident in a distinguished career as a physicist and electronics expert. Recruited from MIT in 1945 to work on the Manhattan Project, he developed the timing circuits for the first atomic bomb and witnessed the test detonation in Alamogordo, New Mexico. The following year, he helped found the Federation of Atomic (later, American) Scientists. A passionate advocate of nuclear nonproliferation, he worked tirelessly to educate government officials and the public about adapting atomic energy for peaceful purposes and implementing safeguards on weapons of mass destruction.