s> A space-combat simulation game for the PDP-1 written in 1960-61 by steve Russell, an employee at MIT. sPACEWAR was 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. MIT were wondering what to do with a new vector video displayso steve wrote the world' s first video game. steve now lives in California and still writessoftware for HC12emulators. 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 hisspare time on a scavenged PDP-7, the operating system that became Unix. Less than nine years after that, sPACEWAR was commercialised as one of the first video games descendants are still feeping in video arcades everywhere. ["sPACEWAR" or "space Travel"?] [Jargon File] (2004-07-19)