People at Play Archive

I recently revisited World Video Game Hall of Fame inductee The Oregon Trail, traveling west with extra oxen, plenty of bullets, and cash to spare. My colleague Laurie was laid up with typhoid, and Jo died of cholera near Independence Rock. I succumbed to the same malady before South Pass, alas! I think I started too late in summer because finding water became an issue, but I still had plenty of bullets. Despite criticism aimed at its biases, […]

Continue Reading about A 1927 Board Game Prefigures The Oregon Trail and Beth Dies of Dysentery Published on:
May 27, 2020

Jerome L. Singer, the distinguished psychologist who explored the depths of daydreaming, and alongside his wife the eminent developmental psychologist Dorothy G. Singer (1927–2016), became a pioneer in the study of imaginative play, died on December 14, 2019. Jerome and Dorothy were charter members of the editorial advisory board of The Strong’s American Journal of Play. With his hundreds of publications over a half century of scholarship, Jerome Singer helped us better understand the mysteries of human consciousness, […]

Continue Reading about Remembering Jerome L. Singer: Psychologist and Scholar of Daydreaming and Play Published on:
May 21, 2020

In 2016, the animated film The Secret Life of Pets made us chuckle at the notion that our beloved animal companions lead very different lives than what we imagine after we leave for work or school. Most of us assume they simply lounge around snoozing or staring out the window, anxiously awaiting our return. However, with more people working from home right now than ever before, it has become apparent that our pets—just like most of us—have a distinct daily […]

Continue Reading about Business Hours… For Pets Published on:
May 19, 2020

Like many Americans, I have been home with my children 24/7 for nearly six weeks. The experience has become an independent study for my job as a curator responsible for toys and dolls. I see how my kids interact with their toys and dolls and reflect on what these playthings teach my children. Adding to the mix, my mom has also started to drop off boxes of my childhood playthings, including a bin of Barbie dolls.
Barbie has generated criticism since […]

Continue Reading about Life in Plastic: It’s Not Just Barbie Published on:
May 15, 2020

When I left home for graduate school and my first apartment, I could barely boil water. But I rapidly recognized that I couldn’t afford to go out to eat very often and I didn’t want to subsist on products from the supermarket’s freezer case. My solution? Learn to cook! Living alone let me experiment and hone my kitchen skills without anyone else around to say, “I thought we were going to eat before 8 p.m.” or “Did you really mean […]

Continue Reading about Cooking for Fun Published on:
May 13, 2020

Ralph Baer is perhaps best known as the father of home video games. He patented the idea for playing a video game on a television and then successfully developed the first home video game system, the Magnavox Odyssey, that came out in 1972. And yet Baer’s work on video games was only one small part of a lifetime of inventing. He had worked for decades in the defense industry, ultimately heading a major engineering division of Sanders, a large military […]

Continue Reading about Ralph Baer—Toy Inventor Published on:
May 7, 2020

Mary Valentine
The Strong Museum Trustee
 
I’ve had a love of music since I was a kid—singing, dancing, listening, playing while listening. Playing while listening? Absolutely. I’m talking about musical chairs. I first played this game at my August birthday party when I was about eight or nine years old. Since I was born in the summer, the parties were held in our backyard, with my dad cooking up hot dogs and hamburgers on a round grill from Sears, Roebuck & Co, […]

Continue Reading about Musical Chairs Published on:
May 5, 2020

Not long ago—1977, to be exact—in our very own galaxy, moviegoers witnessed the birth of a legend. Since its inception, the Star Wars franchise has generated billions of dollars in film, television, and merchandise, and is one of the most iconic titles in entertainment history. But while its popularity is undisputed today, that was not always the case. In fact, it was quite the opposite, which led to what could have easily become one of the biggest faux pas in […]

Continue Reading about Star Wars Day: The Action Figures that Almost Weren’t Published on:
April 30, 2020

In 2018, The Strong embarked on a project to digitize floppy disks using a device called the Kryoflux to capture the data stored on 3.5- and 5.25-inch floppy disks. Reading a floppy disk in the 21st century was the first step necessary to preserve hundreds of floppy disks in The Strong’s archival collections. In some cases, the Kryoflux was a useful tool to capture old games and development materials but, with more than 1,500 floppy disk images in […]

Continue Reading about Digging for GEM icons in an Atari ST Floppy Disk Published on:
April 28, 2020