Living Computer Museum

[Lars Brinkhoff]

Eric Smith wrote:
> When we restored the PDP-1 at CHM, we *really* wanted to make sure
> that the public could interact with it, though in a limited
> fashion. Ken Sumrall and I built quick-and-dirty Spacewar control
> boxes out of particle board and arcade switches, which were intended
> for restoration team use, and we originally thought that we would
> later build some "more authentic" control boxes. (The control boxes
> used in Boston had disappeared, and in any case we don't know whether
> they were "original".) However, Steve Russell (author of the Spacewar
> game) pointed out that our hastily knocked together control boxes
> actually were "authentic" in the sense that the originals were also
> hastily knocked together out of whatever was at hand.

Random tidbit.  I heard from Richard Greenblatt the PDP-1 Spacewar
consoles (original or not, I don't know) had a really great feel, and
when Spacewar was ported to the PDP-6 the new consoles were not as good.
Asking around about this, Michael Beeler said he make the PDP-6 consoles
and conceded the original consoles were better.