So there was an obituary in the New York Times the other day:
“Overlooked No More: Mabel Addis, Who Pioneered Storytelling in Video Gaming”
“She was a teacher when she participated in an educational experiment
with IBM. As a result, she became the first female video game designer.”
There’s a photo of Ms. Addis, surrounded by three young girls, captioned:
“Mabel Addis, at the keyboard, in 1964 with students. Her Sumerian Game
taught the basics of economic theory.
Credit…R.W. Burghardt/IBM, via Devin Monnens”
The article goes on to say “A slide projector and a cassette player set
the scene as students entered commands on a typewriter-like IBM 1050 linked
to an IBM 7090 mainframe computer.” And another photo is captioned:
“An example of the typewriter-like IBM 1050 that students would have used
to play the game Addis wrote.
Credit…N.E.A. Photo, via Kate Willaert”
So my first thought was – OK, so clearly this interactive program
wasn’t likely being run on a typical IBM 7090 batch operating system
(like IBSYS or UMES), so. . . timesharing?
The only timesharing system I’m aware of for the IBM 7090 in 1964 would
have been MIT’s CTSS. Also, the tank-like 1050 terminal is pretty heavy
guns to be installed in a school – you’d think an ASR 33 teletype
(as commonly used with CTSS) would have been a more likely choice,
right?
So, a bit of googling turned up (via a podcast and YouTube channel I hadn’t
known about, so that at least was useful):
Sean Haas’ “Advent of Computing” podcast (also available on YouTube).
Episode 57, “Simulated Sumeria” contains (at 26:07 [/1:00:45])
“You may have noticed that I’ve been a little bit unclear about some
aspects of the Sumerian Game. That’s for good reason. The program itself
hasn’t survived into the modern day. In fact, it didn’t survive very
long at all. After revisions, the updated version was used in a
classroom in 1966. Then, its hundreds or maybe even thousands of lines
of Fortran seemed to disappear into the sands of time. So, why did such
a complicated program, one that was even developed with government funds,
just disappear? Why did no one keep a copy of the code around? I think
a big reason is that the Sumerian Game wasn’t really the project’s final
result. This gets back to the root of the IBM-BOCES [Boards of Cooperative
Educational Services in New York State] collaboration. The initial
proposal was to study if a computer game could help teach students
economics. The Sumerian Game was just part of the experiment design.
Once the study ran its course, the game didn’t really matter as much as
the data. I think a contributing factor was probably computer access.
During the study, students were bussed out to an IBM office to actually
play the Sumerian Game. Once the study was completed, the rural school
just didn’t really have access to IBM’s computers. It’s not like many
school districts at this point in history could afford their own computer. . .”
So Haas’ commentary (together with any lack of any Google conjunction among
“CTSS”, “Sumerian” and “Mabel Addis” suggests that this was a standalone
program that actually monopolized an entire IBM 7090 while it was being run.
Which would explain both the necessity of bussing the kids to an IBM office
and the heavy-duty 1050 terminal (which was presumably simply what IBM had
on hand to interface with the mainframe). Clearly never intended to be actually
distributed to schools, at the time (which would, presumably, have required
collaboration with MIT to obtain the use of CTSS, which apparently was
never in the cards).
¯_(ツ)_/¯
