SPACEWAR
n. 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 commercialized as one of
the first video games; descendants are still feeping in video
arcades everywhere.
