What was the world's first successful video game? Pong ~ a black and white arcade game in which two players plied virtual paddles, batting a blip of light back and forth. It was the 1958 brainchild of William Higinbotham, physicist and pinball player, who invented it to amuse visitors at the Brookhaven National Laboratory where he worked. It was not actually a video game, but was based around a computer and a CRT.

How to Make a Pong. Higinbotham showed the game to the public using an oscilloscope to generate the picture, and a vacuum tube analog computer to calculate the trajectory of the ball.

Tennis for Two. Higinbotham never bothered patenting the game, which he called "Tennis for Two." When Atari bought the arcade version in 1972, Higinbotham never got a dime.