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1 entry of 164 involving Rogers Majestic

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1950-1959 The 1950s

A tall tic-tac-toe machine draws crowds at a Toronto fair

Josef Kates built a tic-tac-toe machine taller than the people playing it for the Canadian National Exhibition, using a vacuum tube of his own design. Visitors queued to take a turn, and it was scrapped when the fair closed.

Key facts and significance Hide details
Region
North America
Period
The 1950s

Why it matters

Among the earliest machines built so that members of the public could play a game against electronics, and one of the first to treat difficulty as something an operator could tune to the person in front of it. It also shows how quickly the exhibition hall became the standard place to explain computing to an audience.

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