PLATO (computer System) - Innovation

Innovation

  • Plasma display, circa 1964, by Donald Bitzer for PLATO IV
  • Touchscreen, circa 1964, by Donald Bitzer for PLATO IV
  • Answer Judging Machinery, ?date?, a set of about 25 commands in TUTOR that made it easy to test a student's understanding of a complex concept.
  • Show Display Mode, 1975, a graphics application generator for TUTOR software, precursor to Apple's QuickDraw picture language editor.
  • Charset Editor, an early precursor to MacPaint for drawing bitmapped pictures stored in downloadable fonts.
  • Monitor Mode on PLATO, 1974, used by instructors to help students, precursor of Timbuktu screen-sharing software.
  • Pad and a few months later, system-defined Notesfiles, 1973, the first general-purpose computer message board, and precursor to Unix Newsgroups, Digital DECnotes and Lotus Notes.
  • Talkomatic, 1974, a 6-person real-time chat room (text-based), precursor to Instant Messaging Conferences.
  • Term-Talk, 1973, precursor to instant messaging.
  • Gooch Synthetic Woodwind, circa 1972, A music device for the terminal, precursor to sound cards and MIDI.
  • Airfight, 1974, a 3-D flight simulator written for PLATO by Brand Fortner; this probably inspired UIUC student Bruce Artwick to start subLOGIC which was acquired and later became Microsoft Flight Simulator.
  • Empire, circa 1974, a 30 person multi-player inter-terminal 2-D real-time space simulation.
  • Spasim, circa 1974, a 32-player first-person 3D space battle game
  • Pedit5, circa 1974, likely the first graphical dungeon computer game.
  • dnd, 1974–1975, a dungeon crawl game that included the first video game boss.
  • Panther, circa 1975 by John Haefeli, a 3-D tank simulation and forerunner of Atari's Battlezone game.
  • Build-Up, 1975 by Bruce Wallace, based on a story by J. G. Ballard, the first PLATO 3-D walkthru maze game. The maze itself was also 3-D, having holes in the floor and ceiling.
  • Think15, circa 1977, 2-D outdoor wilderness quest simulation, like Trek with monsters, trees, treasures.
  • Avatar, circa 1978, a 2.5-D graphical Multi-User Dungeon (MUD), a precursor to EverQuest.
  • Freecell, 1979 by Paul Alfille, which probably spawned the Windows version.
  • Mahjong solitaire, 1981 by Brodie Lockard, popularised in 1986 by Activision as Shanghai.
  • Emoticons, by 1973

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Famous quotes containing the word innovation:

    “Both cultures encourage innovation and experimentation, but are likely to reject the innovator if his innovation is not accepted by audiences. High culture experiments that are rejected by audiences in the creator’s lifetime may, however, become classics in another era, whereas popular culture experiments are forgotten if not immediately successful. Even so, in both cultures innovation is rare, although in high culture it is celebrated and in popular culture it is taken for granted.”
    —Herbert J. Gans (b. 1927)