nuclear-news

Inventor of video games was also part of developing atomic bomb – later opposing it.

If nothing else, William Higinbotham was a man with range Kotaku.com ByJohn Walker ”…………….. . In 1958 the American physicist 

William Higinbotham learned that the Brookhaven National Laboratory’s fancy new computer, the Donner Model 30, could simulate trajectories with wind resistance. So, like any good scientist, he figured, “Hey, I’ll invent video games.” Teaming up with Robert V Dvorak, three weeks later they’d done exactly that, creating a little tennis sim drawn in green lines on the circular oscilloscope screen. It was a hit at the lab’s annual public exhibition.

……..   some 25 years earlier, he’d been part of the damn Manhattan Project, heading a group involved in building the first ever atomic bomb.During World War II: Germany Strikes Back, Higinbotham was working at the infamous Los Alamos National Laboratory, where he was in charge of the electronics department. He led a team that created the electronic triggers for those first A-bombs. However, as his 1994 New York Times obituary points out, Higinbotham very quickly went on to establish the Federation of American Scientists, a group that lobbied for tight controls over nuclear weapons. He spent the rest of his career campaigning for nuclear nonproliferation……….. https://kotaku.com/nuclear-bombs-and-video-games-were-created-by-the-same-1847481382

August 14, 2021 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | history, USA