The $120,000 computer that became a video-game machine

A closer look

Procrastination has always been the mother of invention. In 1962, a group of MIT students secured access to a newly installed PDP-1 computer, which cost over $120,000. Instead of using it to solve complex scientific equations, Steve Russell spent 200 hours programming a game where two little spaceships shoot tiny pixels at each other. Spacewar! became massively popular among universities, effectively proving that no matter how powerful or expensive a machine is, humans will inevitably use it to play video games.