The History of Game the Game of History

LaGuardia Smashing Pinball Machines

Rear Admiral Grace Hopper, the mid-wife to the infant computer industry.

Prepping my upcoming History of Videogames class is different than all my researches into the History of Animation because this has all happened within my lifetime. I was in the arcades playing the games.

Yesterday I saw my friend, Aki Umemoto, at the semester end judging at an animation school. It occurred to me that Aki was at Mattel through out the whole Intellivison debacle. A financial disaster that is still rippling through the company today. There is nothing like first hand information when it comes to history.




The strange thing is that most of the people making games in the 70s and 80s were not trained in animation. But then what you need is a programmer, right. What does animation have to do with videogames anyway?

Which reminds me, In 1950 Mauchly & Eckert, makers of UNIVAX and other early computers run out of money so they go to IBM for backing which they do not get. IBM sees no money in computers.