william higinbotham william higinbotham october 25 1910 november 10 1994 was an american physicist a member of the team that developed the first nuclear bomb he later became a leader in the nonproliferation movement he also has a place in the history of video games for his 1958 creation of tennis for two the first interactive analog computer game and one of the first electronic games to use a graphical display early life higinbotham was born in bridgeport connecticut and grew up in caledonia new york his father was a minister in the presbyterian church he earned his undergraduate degree from williams college in 1932 and continued his studies at cornell university career 1958 exhibit of tennis for two during world war ii he worked at los alamos national laboratory and headed the labs electronics group in the later years of the war where his team developed electronics for the first nuclear bomb published by the institute of nuclear materials management in 1947 higinbotham took a position at brookhaven national laboratory where he worked until his retirement in 1984 in 1958 as head of the instrumentation division at brookhaven he created a computer game called tennis for two for the laboratorys annual exposition a tennis simulator displayed on an oscilloscope the game is credited with being one of the first video games he recalled in 1983 instruction book that came with the computer described how to plot trajectories and bouncing shapes for research i thought hell this would make a good game legacy largely forgotten for years critics began to recognize tennis for twos significance to the history of video games in the 1980s in 1983 david ahl who had played the game at the brookhaven exhibition as a teenager wrote a cover story for creative computing in which he dubbed higinbotham the grandfather of video games in 2011 stony brook university founded the william a higinbotham game studies collection managed by head of special collections and university archives kristen nyitray and associate professor of digital cultural studies raiford guins higinbotham remained little interested in video games preferring to be remembered for his work in nuclear nonproliferation after his death as requests for information on tennis for two increased his son william b higinbotham told brookhaven it is imperative that you include information on his nuclear nonproliferation work that was what he wanted to be remembered for for this work the federation of american scientists named their headquarters higinbotham hall in 1994 the dot eaters entry on higinbotham and his pong precursor who really invented the video game an editorial by john anderson from creative computing video arcade games vol 1 no 1 spring 1983 the institute of nuclear materials management inventorwilliam higinbotham biography william a higinbotham game studies collection at stony brook university authority control worldcat identities gnd 1015002684 isni 0000 0001 1698 2465 lccn n82220685 viaf 109739413 