From Cave Paintings to the Internet A Chronological and Thematic Database on the History of Information and Media Games / Simulations Outline

The First Olympic Games
(776 BCE)

Playing Cards: One of the Earliest Forms of Block Printing
(1007 – 1072)

The Earliest References to Playing Cards in Europe
(1377)

Printing Playing Cards
(1418)

The Earliest Known Artist to Produce Copperplate Engravings
(1435 – 1455)

The Chess-Playing Turk
(1769)

The First Successful Speech Synthesizer
(1791)

The First Decision-Making Automaton
(1911)

The Minimax Theorem
(1928)

The First Flight Simulator
(1929)

The First Electronic Speech Synthesizer
(1936 – 1939)

Project Whirlwind Begins
(1943)

The Theory of Games and Economic Behavior
(1944)

The First Weather Forecast by Electronic Computer
(1950)

The First Technical Paper on Computer Chess
(March 1950)

The First Graphical Computer Game
(1952)

The First Video Game
(1958)

Game Tree Pruning
(October 1958)

Machines Can Learn from Past Errors
(July 1959)

Spacewar, the First Computer Game for a Commercially Available Computer
(1962)

The First CAD Program
(December 1962)

The First Graphical User Interface
(1963)

Programming Language for Education and Games
(1965 – 1969)

First Virtual Reality Head Mounted Display System
(1968)

Commercializing the Use of Computers as Simulators
(1968)

The Earliest Coin-Operated Computer or Video Game
(September 1971)

The First Commercially Sold Coin-Operated Video Game
(November 1971)

The First Home Video Game Console
(May 24, 1972)

Pong: The First Successful Computer Game
(June 27, 1972)

SPACEWAR: Fanatic Life and Symbolic Death Among the Computer Bums
(December 7, 1972)

The First Networked 3D Multi-User First Person Shooter Game
(1973 – 1974)

The First Computer Role-Playing Game, Dungeons & Dragons
(1974 – 1975)

The Roots of the PostScript Page Description Language
(1975 – 1978)

The First Computer Text Adventure Game
(1975 – 1976)

The Warez Scene
(Circa 1975)

Home Pong
(1975)

First Successful Video Game Console Using Plug-in Cartridges
(1977)

First Multi-Player Computer Games
(1977)

Zork
(1977 – 1979)

The First Graphical Computer Adventure Game
(1979 – 1980)

Pac-Man
(May 22, 1980)

The First Cheap Home Computer
(August 1982)

"Dial-a-Game"
(1983)

Avatar in the Context of Online Representation of a User
(1985)

Nintendo's Super Mario Bros.
(1985)

Kasparov Defeats 32 Different Chess Computers
(1985)

The First Computer Games Developers Conference
(1988)

The Electronic Frontier Foundation is Founded
(1990)

A Computer Checkers Program Defeats the Human World Checkers Champion
(1994)

Steve Jackson Games v. U.S. Secret Service
(October 31, 1994)

PlayStation
(December 3, 1994)

IBM Deep Blue Defeats Gary Kasparov
(May 11, 1997)

Where's George?
(December 23, 1998)

The First Attempt to Make a Photorealistic Computer Animated 3D Feature Film
(July 11, 2001)

Xbox
(November 15, 2001)

Machinima
(2002)

Over 102 Million Units Shipped
(March 31, 2005)

The "Cyber Storm" War Game
(February 6 – February 10, 2006)

Checkers is Solved.
(April 29, 2007)

Game-Based Learning for Virtual Patients
(March 2008)

Cyber Storm II
(March 10 – March 14, 2008)

Supercomputer Built from Video Gaming Components
(June 2008)

IBM's Watson Question Answering System Challenges Humans at Jeopardy
(April 27, 2009)

Employment in the Field of Simulation
(June 14, 2009)

"The World's First Full-Size Robotic Girlfriend"
(January 9, 2010)