< games > A space-combat simulation game, inspired by E. E. "Doc" Smith's "Lensman" books, in which two spaceships duel around a central sun, shooting torpedoes at each other and jumping through hyperspace. This game was first implemented on the PDP-1 at MIT in 1960--61.
SPACEWAR aficionados formed the core of the early hacker culture at MIT . Nine years later, a descendant of the game motivated Ken Thompson to build, in his spare time on a scavenged PDP-7 , the operating system that became Unix . Less than nine years after that, SPACEWAR was commercialised as one of the first video games; descendants are still feep ing in video arcades everywhere.
["SPACEWAR" or "Space Travel"?]
[ Jargon File ]
(1994-11-07)