Milton Bradley Playmate - History

History

The Milton Bradley Playmate was first conceived by Alex Cartwright, a student of engineering at Harvard in the mid-60s. Cartwright was a board-game enthusiast but often found it difficult to find others to play with due to the lack of free time afforded by his major and the odd hours at which he had to take classes.

Inspired by The Turk, Cartwright decided to create a robot that could be programmed to play board games, and by 1968 had developed a large-scale prototype that could play, with relative accuracy, a full game of Battleship. He presented this prototype to the Milton Bradley Company, who were intrigued by the possibilities. The company gave Cartwright funding to pursue further research. The robot, dubbed the Playmate, would undergo several changes during this time, including a general streamlining in its parts and size, and the introduction of programmable cards to give the robot additional flexibility.

Despite working for well over 6 years on the project, Cartwright could never get the size of the device small enough to make it practical for home sales, and Milton Bradley pulled Cartwright's funding in 1975. Cartwright would attempt to convince other board game manufacturers to give him funding but met little success, and, despondent, killed himself in 1977.