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There’s something liberating about the yo-yo. I keep one on my desk for emergencies—like when a balky sentence has me hanging. You’d be surprised at how a twisted paragraph will straighten out and fly right after a few tosses of a yo-yo. In his superb novel, Stop Time, Frank Conroy wrote, “To yo-yo you have to let go.” And indeed you do; thinking too hard will tangle a yo-yo trick just as it can tie up an idea.
The strict parochial […]
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Hurray for Inventors!
Toy and game inventors deserve their time in the spotlight, according to the annual TAGIE (Toy and Game Inventors Expo) Awards. Bestselling books and hit songs earn authors and singers publicity as well as financial rewards. But create a million-selling toy or game and practically no one knows your name. The TAGIE Awards honor the people behind the playthings, celebrating their creations and the fun they’ve brought to our lives.
A few weeks ago, Nic Ricketts, the museum’s games curator, and […]
Finnish Question Sends NCHEG Deep Into Archives
A recent e-mail inquiry from a researcher in Finland gave me a great opportunity to mine our vast trade catalog collection for information about the prehistory of electronic games. The researcher wanted to know more about the origins of pre-computer electric quiz games of the 1940s and 1950s.
Most books on the history of electronic games start the story in the 1960s, with Steve Russell’s creation of Spacewar! (1962). Others begin with Ralph Baer’s development of television-based video games. Some discuss […]
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‘Twas the night before Christmas
Whenever I read those five simple words, I feel as if a curtain has been deftly drawn aside, revealing the very essence of Christmas with its joyous blending of color and sound, memories and feelings. Under the spell of this poem, I always find myself responding to the magic and wonder of Christmas.
The stockings were hung by the chimney with care
In hopes that St. Nicholas soon would be there;
The poem’s author is Clement Clarke Moore, a theological scholar and professor […]
Fly You to the Moon?
During the 1950s, space adventures loomed large in American pop culture as authors, comic book illustrators, and movie directors entertained the public with a steady diet of space epics. Bizarre aliens, laser beams, and spacecraft of all shapes and sizes mesmerized children and adults alike.
In the early 1960s, President Kennedy fueled public interest in such adventures, when he announced his vision of sending astronauts to the moon and John Glenn became the first American to orbit the earth.
What does this […]
My Guitar Hero Problem
It’s not that I play too much, quite the contrary. The Guitar Hero game I’ve had at home since last Christmas is still wrapped in cellophane. I just can’t bring myself to buy the guitar controller required to play the game.
My reluctance is not a reflection of the game, which is by all measures popular, fun, and imaginative. Guitar Hero is more than a game actually. It’s a pop culture and gaming milestone that has opened doors for an […]
Sesame Street at Forty and Still Counting
It’s hard to believe that Sesame Street is turning forty. But then again, it’s also hard to believe that Sir Michael Philip “Mick” Jagger, another 60’s figure, is old enough to qualify for a British “old age” pension. Sesame Street has aired long enough for its viewers now to include great-grandparents and great grand-children.
Way back before Sesame Street, “educational television” usually meant Sunrise Semester—a six a.m. televised college lecture that was so tiresome that it made you want to crawl […]
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Best in Class: Game Boy, Big Wheel, and the Ball
The excitement builds around the museum every autumn as we lead up to the induction of new toys into the National Toy Hall of Fame. This year, people from all over the country sent us hundreds of toy nominations, each one making the case that their favorite toy should earn a place of honor among the forty-one classics already inducted. No coordinated nomination campaigns emerged this year like 2008 when I heard from tens of thousands of Thomas the Tank […]
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New Interest in Old Text-Based Adventures
“You are in an open field west of a big white house with a boarded front door.” “There is a small mailbox here.”
These words introduced me to computer games, though I didn’t actually read the words on a computer screen—I read them in stacks of perforated, green-and-white-striped printouts that my older brother, Chris, brought home from school. The stacks of printouts came from an amazing game he and his friends had discovered on the high school’s computer system (a DEC […]
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