Draughts programme

Draughts programme       (NPL Pilot ACE)     1951

First released video game, first board game simulator, first game to use computer memory

Game is lost.

Silent, monochrome game.

FERRANTY MARK COMPUTER VERSION (1951) - FIRST EVER GAME SCREENSHOT IN HISTORY!

Trivia:
1) Developer Strachey sent his programme (draughts) for punching beforehand. The programme was about 20 pages long (over a thousand instructions), and the naivete of a first-time user attempting a programme of such length not amused the programmers in the laboratory. Anyway, the day came and Strachey loaded his programme into the Mark I computer. After a couple of errors were fixed, the programme ran straight through and finished by playing God Save the King on the hooter (loudspeaker). On that day Strachey acquired a formidable reputation as a programmer, that he never lost.

2) Released 30 july 1951.
3) NPL Pilot ACE is a Vacuum tube computer- programmable digital computers using vacuum tube logic circuitry. They were preceded by systems using electromechanical relays and followed by systems built from discrete transistors.

4) Computer memory refers to the computer hardware devices used to store information for immediate use in a computer; it is synonymous with the term "primary storage".The term "memory", meaning "primary storage" or "main memory", is often associated with addressable semiconductor memory, i.e. integrated circuits consisting of silicon-based transistors, used for example as primary storage but also other purposes in computers and other digital electronic devices. 

5) Simulation of the game checkers, built for the National Physical Laboratory's Pilot ACE computer. It was later ported to the Manchester Mark 1. The player could play against the computer whose moves were recorded on a teletype printer. The player had to use switches to select his move. There were two cathode ray displays showing the current state of the game and the current input. The input could be discarded if it was undesired.