oxo for other uses see oxo oxooxo played in an edsac simulator for the classic mac osdevelopersa s douglasplatformsedsacreleaseuk 1952genrespuzzlemodessingleplayer oxo or noughts and crosses is a video game developed by a s douglas in 1952 which simulates a game of noughts and crosses it was one of the first games developed in the early history of video games douglas programmed the game as part of a thesis on humancomputer interaction at the university of cambridge it was written on the electronic delay storage automatic calculator edsac edsac was one of the first storedprogram computers with memory that could be read from or written to and had three small cathode ray tube screens to display the state of the memory douglas repurposed one screen to demonstrate portraying other information to the user such as the state of a noughts and crosses game after the game served its purpose it was discarded on the original hardware but later successfully reconstructed oxo along with a draughts game by christopher strachey completed around the same time is one of the earliest known games to display visuals on an electronic screen under some definitions it thus may qualify as the first video game though other definitions exclude it due to its lack of moving or realtime updating graphics history the electronic delay storage automatic calculator in 1948 the electronic delay storage automatic calculator edsac mainframe computer was built in the university of cambridges mathematical laboratory between 1946 and 6 may 1949 when it ran its first program douglas used the edsac to simulate a game of noughts and crosses also called tictactoe and display the state of the game on the screen like other early video games after serving douglass purpose the game was discarded interaction each game was played by one user against an artificially intelligent opponent which could play a perfect game the player entered their input using a rotary telephone controller selecting which of the nine squares on the board they wished to move next their move would appear on the screen and then the computers move would follow the game display only updated when the game state changed 1950s portal the edsac simulator an emulator of the edsac developed by martin campbellkelly that includes oxo vteearly history of video gamesanalog and lightbulb games 19471951 cathoderay tube amusement device bertie the brain nimrod interactive visual games 19521959 oxo tennis for two digital computer games 19601971 early mainframe games spacewar marienbad hamurabi space travel first arcade games 19701971 computer space galaxy game vtetictactoetictactoe variants 3d tictactoe gomoku notakto number scrabble order and chaos pente quantum tictactoe renju sos treblecross ultimate tictactoe wild tictactoe list related concepts mnkgame nd game kaplanskys game hararys generalized tictactoe halesjewett theorem strategystealing argument futile game paperandpencil game similar games nine mens morris score four ticstactoe gobblet quarto three mens morris nine holes achi connect four connect6 oxo toss across pentago 