Sandy Douglas: Difference between revisions

|known_for = [[OXO (video game)|OXO]]

'''Alexander Shafto''' "'''Sandy'''" '''Douglas''' [[Commander of the Order of the British Empire|CBE]] (21 May 1921 – 29 April 2010) was a British professor of [[computer science]], credited with creating the first graphical computer game, [[OXO (video game)|OXO]], a version of [[Noughtsnoughts and Crossescrosses]] computer game, in 1952 on the [[EDSAC]] computer at [[University of Cambridge]].<ref>{{cite book | url = https://books.google.com/books?id=E4-pXc-IEtsC&pg=PA538 | title = Battleground: the media | page = 538 |author1=Andersen, Robin |author2=Gray, Jonathan Alan | publisher = Greenwood Publishing Group | year = 2008 | ISBN = 978-0-313-34169-4 }}</ref><ref>[http://www.pong-story.com/1952.htm A.S.Douglas' 1952 Noughts and Crosses game], [http://www.pong-story.com/ Pong Story].</ref>

Douglas attended the [[University of Cambridge]] in 1950. In 1952, while working towards earning his PhD, he wrote a [[thesis]] which focused on [[human-computer interaction]]s and he needed an example to prove his theories. At that time, Cambridge was home to the second [[stored-program computer]], the [[EDSAC]] or Electronic Delay Storage Automatic Calculator (the first being [[Manchester University]]'s "[[Manchester Baby|Baby]]", which ran its first program on 21 June 1948). This gave Douglas the opportunity to prove his findings by programming the code for a simple game where a player can compete against the computer, [[OXO (video game)|OXO]].