William Alfred Higinbotham: Scientist, Activist, and Computer Game Pioneer

After reading an instruction manual that accompanied a Systron-Donner analog computer, William Alfred Higinbotham was inspired to design Tennis for Two, the first computer game to display motion and allow interactive control with handheld controllers. It was also the first game to be played by the general public—in this instance, attendees of a visitors day at Brookhaven National Laboratory (BNL) in 1958. For Higinbotham, this was just an isolated incident in a distinguished career as a physicist and electronics expert that also encompassed spells at Cornell University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), and Los Alamos National Laboratory. Recruited from MIT in 1945 to work on the Manhattan Project, he developed the timing circuits for the first atomic bomb and witnessed the test detonation in Alamogordo, New Mexico. The following year, he helped found the Federation of Atomic (later, American) Scientists. A passionate advocate of nuclear nonproliferation, he worked tirelessly to educate government officials and the public about adapting atomic energy for peaceful purposes and implementing safeguards on weapons of mass destruction. Early Years William (Willy) Alfred Higinbotham was born in Bridgeport, Connecticut, to the Reverend Robert G. and Dorothea Higinbotham on 25 October 1910. His father was the minister of several churches in New York before settling at the ‘‘White Church,’’ or First Presbyterian Church in Caledonia, a small town located southwest of Rochester. William’s interest in science emerged at the age of 14, when he began constructing and dismantling radios in an effort to pick up the frequency transmissions of the first commercial radio stations. At 16, he enrolled in a high school physics class and quickly discovered that he had a natural affinity for it. Higinbotham entered Williams College in 1928, majored in physics, and obtained a bachelor’s degree in 1932. Finding his employment prospects hindered by the Great Depression, he decided to pursue graduate studies. He was accepted at Cornell University but struggled there as an impoverished student. He explained: