[Ads-l] Antedating of "Video Game"

[ADSGarson O'Toole]

I just attempted to search the PDF archive of the MIT newspaper "The Tech".

http://tech.mit.edu/browse.html

It is not easy to search because there is no natural way to specify
temporal limits. Happily, it is possible to search one volume at a
time. I was unable to find any instances of "video game" in 1973 or
before.

Garson

On Wed, Jan 4, 2023 at 2:52 AM ADSGarson O'Toole
<adsgarsonotoole at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Spacewar! Was one of the first video games.
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spacewar!
>
> [Begin excerpt]
> 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.
> [End excerpt]
>
> Between 1962 and 1972 someone might have referred to "Spacewar!" as a
> video game. There were other early games, e.g., "Snoopy and the Red
> Baron" which Stewart Brand mentioned in 1972. The term "video game" is
> a natural label, but I do not know whether anyone employed it in the
> 1960s. Some M.I.T publication might contain an early instance of
> "video game".
>
> Stewart Brand published an article titled "Spacewar: Fanatic Life and
> Symbolic Death Among the Computer Bums" in the December 7, 1972 issue
> of Rolling Stone (This date is after Nolan Bushnell letter), but Brand
> did not use the term "video game" in the article.
>
> https://www.wheels.org/spacewar/stone/rolling_stone.html
>
> Garson
>
> On Tue, Jan 3, 2023 at 8:35 PM Shapiro, Fred <fred.shapiro at yale.edu> wrote:
> >
> > The OED's first use for the term "video game" is dated 25 Sept. 1973.  A very thorough website
> >
> > https://allincolorforaquarter.blogspot.com/2015/04/the-etymology-of-term-video-game.html
> >
> > has images of the following two citations.  The first of these may be the actual coinage.
> >
> > 1972 Nolan K. Bushnell Letter to John A. Britz 10 July  My projected delivery date for the flipper mock-up is September 1, 1972 with the video game to be finished November 15. ... The video game has a hockey theme which has a great amount of two player speed and excitement.
> >
> > 1973 Cash Box 10 Mar.  Braun also reveled [sic] that two new allied amusement products began shipping to his distributors last Thursday: a video game called 'Paddle Battle' and a machine gun target novelty called 'Rapid Fire'.
> >
> > Fred Shapiro
> >
> > ------------------------------------------------------------
> > The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org

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The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org