<P> The earliest known chess computer program was developed by Alan Turing and David Champernowne called Turochamp, which was completed in 1950 but not actually implemented by them on a computer . The earliest known idea for a fully electronic game is a "Cathode - Ray Tube Amusement Device" in US patent #2,455,992 . </P> <P> The earliest known electronic computer games actually implemented were two custom built machines called Bertie the Brain and Nimrod, which played tic - tac - toe and the game of Nim, respectively . Bertie the Brain, designed and built by Josef Kates at Rogers Majestic, was displayed at the Canadian National Exhibition in 1950, while Nimrod, conceived by John Bennett at Ferranti and built by Raymond Stuart - Williams, was displayed at the Festival of Britain and the Berlin Industrial Show in 1951 . Neither game incorporated a cathode ray tube (CRT) display . Before these, automated games like the simple chess simulator El Ajedrecista (1914) and Nimrod's predecessor Nimatron (1940) had been created as electro - mechanical devices . </P> <P> The first games known to incorporate a monitor were two research projects completed in 1952, a checkers program by Christopher Strachey on the Ferranti Mark 1 and a tic - tac - toe program called OXO by Alexander Douglas on the EDSAC . Both of these programs used a relatively static display to track the current state of the game board . The first known game incorporating graphics that updated in real time was a pool game programmed by William Brown and Ted Lewis specifically for a demonstration of the MIDSAC computer at the University of Michigan in 1954 . </P> <P> Perhaps the first game created solely for entertainment rather than to demonstrate the power of some technology, train personnel, or aid in research was Tennis for Two, designed by William Higinbotham and built by Robert Dvorak at the Brookhaven National Laboratory in 1958 . Designed to entertain the general public at Brookhaven's annual series of open houses, the game was deployed on an analog computer with graphics displayed on an oscilloscope and was dismantled in 1959 . Higinbotham never considered adapting the successful game into a commercial product, which would have been impractical with the technology of the time . Ultimately, the widespread adoption of computers to play games would have to wait for the machines to spread from serious academics to their students on U.S. college campuses . </P>

When did the first video games come out