Digital Video Game Firsts – Michigan Pool (1954)

So I’d like to divert your esteemed attention to a certain, lesser known edge case, “Pool”, implemented by William George Brown and Ted Lewis in 1954 on the one-of-a-kind MIDSAC computer. MIDSAC was one of a pair of machines developed at the University of Michigan during 1951 and 1953 under a $500,000 sponsorship of the United States Air Force, the general purpose MIDAC (the Michigan Automatic Computer) and MIDSAC (Michigan Digital Special Automatic Computer), designed for real-time operations, particularly for guidance problems. According to Brown’s court testimony, the game was done for the sole purpose of the single demonstration in June 1954 and the pool simulation was chosen for its similarities to the guidance problems, which were MIDSAC’s true but classified purpose .

Source: www.masswerk.at