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games 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 commercialised
as one of the first video games; descendants are still
feeping in video arcades everywhere.
["SPACEWAR" or "Space Travel"?]
(1994-11-07)