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Bouncing Ball was an early interactive computer graphics program developed for the Whirlwind I computer at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in the early 1950s. Initially created as a physics demonstration simulating the motion of a bouncing ball, the program was later adapted into an interactive game in 1952 or early 1953 through the addition of a target hole in the floor of the display. Bouncing Ball is one of the earliest examples of animated computer graphics.[1][2][3]

Development

Page from the programming manual for Whirlwind I, featuring a description and illustration of the ‘bouncing ball’ program

The original bouncing-ball simulation was developed for the Whirlwind I computer, a pioneering real-time digital computer constructed at MIT for the U.S. Navy. Whirlwind I became operational in 1951 and was among the first computers capable of displaying real-time graphical output on a cathode-ray tube display.[4]

Bouncing Ball worked as follows:

the ball appeared as a moving spot on the scope. It bounced from left to right. Its movement across the screen described the path of an object based on a mass, initial velocity, and coefficient of restitution named by the bounce program’s differential equations. Whenever it encountered the positions that had been designated as the ground, a sound was produced.[5]

The program was demonstrated to the public at an Open House Day in April, 1951, where the ‘gravity’ setting could be adjusted to show the trajectory of the bouncing ball on the Moon, on Earth, and on Jupiter.[5] The program was first described in detail, with sample code, in the June 11 technical report Programming for Whirlwind I.[6] MIT computer scientist Norman Taylor attributes the program to Charles Adams:

Charlie Adams, the original programmer, decided that we’d better go beyond static curves. And he invented what we call the Bouncing Ball Program, the solution of three differential equations.[7]

Taylor dates this to 1949, by which time Whirlwind I Code had been developed, and the oscilloscope set-up was being tested.[8][5] However, video game historian Alex Smith has shown that the earliest document mentioning Bouncing Ball (2 February 1951) credits a student, Oliver Aberth with the creation of the program.[9][10]

Gameplay

The original Bouncing Ball program was merely a demonstration, and not a game.[11] Some time after its creation, it was modified by Adams and John T. Gilmore to add a small hole at the bottom of the screen for the ball to fall through, and to allow the user to turn a knob to adjust the frequency of the bounces.[9] This was a substantial change to the program, taking it from about 32 words in length to around 300.[12] It is unknown when exactly this modification was done; it is likely to have been in 1952, but the first contemporaneous description of it was from February 1953.[13] After the modification, the members of the lab treated this interactive demo as a game by challenging themselves to set the frequency perfectly to hit the small hole in the floor.[9][7]

The film Making Electrons Count, believed to be from 1953,[12] shows Bouncing Ball in action, with the commentator describing it as a simulation of the differential equations representing the motion of a ball.[14]

Legacy

Bouncing Ball is one of the first computer programs in the early history of video games, and is the first known game incorporating graphics that updated in real time.[13] It was contemporaneous with Christopher Strachey‘s Checkers (1952), Alexander S. Douglas created OXO (1952), and Stanley Gill‘s Sheep and Gates (1952), all of which were also early mainframe games using a visual display.[15][16][17][18] According to media historian Carlin Wing, re-creating Bouncing Ball became a standard programming challenge in the 1950s. He claims that by 1958, they were ubiquitous enough to be included in instruction manuals for analog computers such as the Donner Model 30, and may have inspired William Higinbotham for his creation of Tennis for Two (1958), one of the first computer games created solely for entertainment.[5] Spacewar! (1962) was created at MIT by computer scientists who had direct experience of coding their own bouncing ball programs.[19]

See also

References

  1. ^ Peddie, Jon (2013). The history of visual magic in computers: how beautiful images are made in CAD, 3D, VR and AR. London ; New York: Springer. ISBN 978-1-4471-4931-6.
  2. ^ Smith, Alvy Ray (2016). “The Dawn of Digital Light”. IEEE Annals of the History of Computing. 38 (4): 74–91. doi:10.1353/ahc.2016.0045. ISSN 1934-1547.
  3. ^ Norberg, Arthur (2000). Transforming Computer Technology. Johns Hopkins University Press. ISBN 978-0-8018-5152-0.
  4. ^ Redmond, Kent C.; Smith, Thomas Malcolm (1980). Project Whirlwind: the history of a pioneer computer. Bedford, Mass: Digital Press. ISBN 978-0-932376-09-1.
  5. ^ a b c d Wing, Carlin (January 20, 2026). Bounce. The MIT Press. ISBN 978-0-262-38453-7.
  6. ^ Hrand Saxenian, Programming for Whirlwind I, technical report R-196, Cambridge MA: MIT, Electronic Computer Division, Servomechanisms Laboratory, 1951
  7. ^ a b Hurst, J.; Mhoney, M. S.; Taylor, N. H.; Ross, D. T.; Fano, R. M. (July 1989). “Retrospectives I: The early years in computer graphics at MIT, Lincoln Lab, and Harvard”. ACM SIGGRAPH 89 Panel Proceedings. New York, NY, USA: ACM. pp. 19–38. doi:10.1145/77276.77279. ISBN 0-89791-353-1.
  8. ^ Redmond, Kent C. (1980). Project Whirlwind: The History of a Pioneer Computer. Bedford, MA: Digital Press.
  9. ^ a b c Smith, Alexander (2020). They create worlds: the story of the people and companies that shaped the video game industry. Boca Raton: CRC Press, Taylor & Francis Group. p. 37. ISBN 978-0-429-42364-2.
  10. ^ See ‘Bi-Weekly Report, Project 6673, February 2, 1951’, Memorandum M-2084, prepared by the Electronic Computer Division of the Servomechanisms Laboratory of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, February 2, 1951, p. 5.
  11. ^ Gilmore, Jack (1982). “Whirlwind before Core” (PDF). The Computer Museum Report. 2: 8.
  12. ^ a b Fedorkow, Guy C. (January 1, 2021). “Recovering Software for the Whirlwind Computer”. IEEE Annals of the History of Computing. 43 (1): 38–59. doi:10.1109/mahc.2020.3048815. ISSN 1058-6180.
  13. ^ a b Smith, Alexander (March 10, 2021). “Worldly Wednesdays: The First Real-Time Games”. They Create Worlds. Archived from the original on March 10, 2021. Retrieved March 10, 2021.
  14. ^ From the Vault of MIT (January 20, 2016). Making Electrons Count (c. 1950). Retrieved June 8, 2026 – via YouTube.
  15. ^ Wardrip-Fruin, Noah (2020). How Pac-Man eats. Software studies. Cambridge, Massachusetts: The MIT Press. ISBN 978-0-262-04465-3.
  16. ^ Kidwell, Peggy Aldrich (2015). “Playing Checkers with Machines—from Ajeeb to Chinook”. Information & Culture. 50 (4): 578–587. ISSN 2164-8034.
  17. ^ Smith, Alvy Ray (June 9, 2015). “The Dawn of Digital Light”. IEEE Annals of the History of Computing. 38 (4): 74–91. doi:10.1109/MAHC.2015.51. S2CID 10257358.
  18. ^ Smith, Alexander (January 22, 2014). “The Priesthood At Play: Computer Games in the 1950s”. They Create Worlds. Archived from the original on December 22, 2015. Retrieved December 18, 2015.
  19. ^ Graetz, J. Martin (August 1981). “The Origin of Spacewar”. Creative Computing. 7 (8).