CDC 6600 Checkout Testing (Space Wars)

Where there were computers, there were computer games. Even the original CDC 6600 checkout engineers famously used the 6600's innovative CRT monitors for early games like Space Wars, Lunar Lander, and Baseball as a way to test the machine. Because it was among the first commercial computers to feature an interactive cathode-ray tube display console instead of just glowing lights and typewriter text, it became the perfect sandbox for early coders. CDC's checkout and maintenance engineers needed a fast, highly visual way to ensure that all parts of the multi-million dollar system, especially the graphics consoles and peripheral processors, were firing correctly under heavy stress. To do this, they programmed a suite of highly advanced, real-time diagnostic games. [1]

While Spacewar was originally coded on the MIT PDP-1 in 1962, the CDC 6600 Space Wars version took full advantage of the supercomputer's immense processing speed. It featured two vector-graphics spaceships maneuvering in real-time, firing torpedoes at each other while being pulled by the gravity of a central star. Lunar Lander was an early, real-time precursor to the text-based and arcade lander games that would explode in popularity in the seventies. Players had to precisely calculate thrust and fuel consumption using the console controls to safely descend a spacecraft onto a jagged vector-graphics moon landscape without crashing. Baseball was a highly unique vector-graphic sports game for the era. A pitcher would throw a pitch, and the batter would have to swing with strict timing to hit the ball out into a digitally rendered diamond. Some historical legal documents from Magnavox patent lawsuits in the seventies point to this exact CDC game as a precursor to early video arcade sports.

CDC engineers openly admitted that the games became the primary incentive for getting the temperamental machines operational. If a newly assembled CDC 6600 could smoothly run Space Wars or Baseball without freezing or crashing, it meant the entire system architecture was completely sound. Because these games utilized the console screens long before commercial video games existed, they can be considered among the first computer games to use graphical monitors.

Possibly a checkout engineer?

Baseball [2]

[1] Mention of the checkout testing games https://www.cisl.ucar.edu/ncar-supercomputing-history/cdc6600 

[2] Baseball photo 

[3] One reason that the following link is so interesting is that have met an original european CDC sales rep. He's now also a prominent art dealer, gallery owner, and highly respectable old gentleman of Frankfurt. Was there to meet family for their art opening in October 2024. His home was over the gallery, and during the dinner after the event, quite magically we had a conversation about CDC. Just one of those unforgettable things. CDC 6600 arrives at CERN in 1965 https://timeline.web.cern.ch/cdc-6600-arrives-cern