This is a short piece of writing on the origins of computing starting in the mid 19th century leading up to the 1970’s. Home computers similar to the ones that we are all familiar with using today, didn't enter the home in a recognisable form until around 1977. Before that time computers were huge machines that engulfed whole rooms, took teams of people to work them and were almost exclusively owned by universities that were researching them. The precursors to these goliath machines date back much earlier, with mechanical machines designed to to make tedious or complex tasks automated.
One notable machine that automated a complex task was the Jacquard Loom. It was a mechanical loom that used punch cards to change the pattern of the fabric that was weaved. The most significant thing about this machine was the use of punch cards, it paved the way for first ever computers that would also use punch cards to determine what program was being run. Not all examples of progress in the history of computing were actually physical machines, a notable example of this is the Alan Turing machine. Designed by Alan Turing in 1936, a Turing machine is in fact a purely hypothetical model of a machine described in Alan Turing’s paper ON COMPUTABLE NUMBERS, WITH AN APPLICATION TO THE ENTSCHEIDUNGSPROBLEM.
The conceptual machine functions with an infinitely long tape upon which the machine can write, read, and alter symbols. With this simple set of functions and a correct set of operations the machine would be able to calculate anything that is computable, it could be described as a universal computational machine. The Turing machine described in the paper was just a theoretic exercise on the limitations of computing, however many machines built from this point onward are considered “Turing complete” meaning that they can simulate a single-taped turing machine.
In the early 1940’s a significant figure in the advancement of computing was Konrad Zuse, in 1941 he completed the Z3 which was the worlds first fully functional programmable computer. After that point progress on computers accelerated at a much faster rate; the Z3 was the first computer in which processes could actually be measured in Hz, it wasn't until 1998 that this machine was shown to be Turing complete.
As with many other advancements in technology and science that greatly benefit humankind as a whole, it wasn't long before these types of machines showed their use for entertainment. The Cathode Ray Tube Amusement Device invented in 1947 and Tennis for 2 made in 1958 are two notable examples. These were the first steps on the road to video games, however they could barely be recognised as video games, as the graphics could not yet be displayed in any visual system more advanced than the dot on an oscilloscope which the game Tennis for 2 used. 
The Cathode Ray Tube Amusement Device was based on missile detection with radar in World War 2 and used printed graphics on the screen as solution to this problem. Just as the original universal machines advanced at an alarming rate after the first breakthroughs, so did video games; 7 years later the first game to run on a television set was released, the Magnavox Odyssey, 6 years after that what people commonly mistake as the first ever video game was released; Pong! From that point on the road of video games in the history of computers is a much clearer path, as it is much easier to identify what actually was a video game.There were so many advancements in such a short time from this point onward that this article would just be an extremely long list if I were to catalogue them all. However two points that must be noted are the introduction of cartridge based gaming by Atari in 1977 and the birth of Space invaders in 1978, by which time we were well into the golden age of arcade gaming, throughout which the cartridge system was going to change forever. That will all be covered in my next post, the History of Videogames, from the 1980’s to the 1990’s.
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