SPACEWAR
SPACEWAR n. 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
commercialized as one of the first video games; descendants are
still {feep}ing in video arcades everywhere.
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