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The first computers were very big in size, very limited in processing power, had no real-time-graphics and only few people had access to them. In 1961, Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) donated their latest computer to Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), the PDP-1 (Programmed Data Processor-1). It sold for $120,000. Compared to the many computers of its time, the PDP-1 was comparatively modest in size - about as big as a large automobile.

Like most universities, MIT had several campus organizations. One of them was the Tech Model Railroad Club (TMRC). It appealed to students who liked to build systems and see how things worked. TMRC had access to PDP-1 and creating new programs and improving older ones was considered an impressive hack among them. They programmed for the fun of it, not for the money, and program source code was public domain, for anybody to use and improve.

Steve Russell, nicknamed “Slug”, was a typical nerd with affection to Science Fiction and a member of TMRC. He decided to make the ultimate hack, an interactive game. It took Russell nearly six months and 200 man-hours to complete the first version of the game, a simple two-player game between rocket ships. Using toggle switches built into the PDP-1, players controlled the speed and direction of both ships and fired torpedoes at each other. Russell called his game, “Spacewar”. In true hacker spirits the TMRC revised Spacewar and added several elements to it, including an accurate map of the stars in the background and a sun with an accurate gravitational field in the foreground, hyperspace button, unpredictable torpedoes (for more realism) and built remote controllers to replace PDP-1’s native controls (the forerunners of joystick). Spacewar was the predecessor of Asteroids (Atari) and Gravitar (Atari).

Although Russell’s amazing hack created a sensation throughout MIT, he never made a penny from it. PDP computers cost too much to adapt the game for the consumer market, even as an arcade machine.