Published: Morristown, N.J., 1981 Before World of Warcraft, before Super Mario Brothers or Pac-Man, even before Pong, there was Spacewar! Not everyone knows it, but MIT holds a unique place in the history of video games. It was here that the first video game intended for computer use – Spacewar! – was invented. One of the creators of the game, J. Martin Graetz, tells the story of Spacewar!’s development in “The Origin of Spacewar.” The game was conceived by Graetz and his friends Wayne Wiitanen and Stephen R. (Slug) Russell, who referred to themselves as the “Hingham Institute,” named after […]

Published: Norwalk, Conn. and Washington, D.C., 1980 This lavishly illustrated catalog reads like a Who’s Who of scientific greats. The Burndy Library, from which these items have been selected, is the fruit of more than fifty years of collecting by Bern Dibner. A self-made Ukrainian immigrant, Dibner made his fortune as an inventive electrical engineer. He donated about 10,000 volumes – roughly a quarter of his collection – to the Smithsonian in 1974. The remainder of the collection, which was housed at MIT from 1992-2006, now resides at the Huntington Library in San Marino, California. “The books described here,” the […]

Published: Cambridge, Mass., 1979 The Oxford English Dictionary defines “fanzine” as “a magazine for fans, esp. those of science fiction.” One thing the OED definition leaves out, though, is the fact that fanzines are as much by fans as for fans. MIT’s Twilight Zine fits this expanded definition to a “t”: it’s produced by MITSFS, the MIT Science Fiction Society. Fanzine is a portmanteau term combining “fanatic” and “magazine.” It first appeared in the early 1940s to describe the many amateur publications that were being written, illustrated, and printed by fans of science fiction. They were usually copied as cheaply […]

Published: Urbana, Ill., 1978 It’s difficult to hear the story of Zora Neale Hurston’s life without succumbing to feelings of sorrow and frustration. Had she written nothing except the magnificent 1937 novel Their Eyes Were Watching God, Hurston would merit a place on any list of important American writers. But she did publish a good deal more, and much of it was brilliant. Nonetheless, the year 1959 found Hurston, a woman of color by then approaching old age, writing in longhand to Harper & Brothers, asking them please to consider a book she was completing. In the 1972 critical anthology […]

Published:  Boston, 1977 North America’s largest oil field was discovered in Prudhoe Bay on Alaska’s North Slope in 1968, just 9 years into Alaska’s statehood. The discovery unleashed a heated environmental, legal, and political debate unprecedented in the state’s brief history. It took the shock of the 1973 oil embargo – and the accompanying sharp rise in crude oil prices – to clear a legislative path that would enable oil drilling, and ultimately, the construction of the Trans-Alaska Pipeline. Stretching 800 miles, from north to south coasts, the pipeline took less than four years to build. As people flooded into […]

Theatrical release: November 3, 1976 It’s an iconic scene: Sissy Spacek as Carrie White, dressed in satin of the palest pink, has just been named Prom Queen. As she accepts the award, a smile lights up her face. Suddenly a bucket of pig’s blood showers over her, drenching her in red. All hell literally breaks loose as Carrie uses her telekinetic powers to wreak vengeance on the entire school. Today, Carrie is considered one of the finest horror movies ever made. It shocked audiences, was a box office smash, and earned Academy Award nominations for both Spacek and Piper Laurie, […]

Published: New York, 1975 Science uncovers truths by testing theories or predictions in trials that can be replicated, and at MIT, science is king. But in the wider world, misinformation runs rampant. Familiar phrases are often actually misquotes that have been repeated so often that the authentic, original wording sounds strange and incorrect. In a similar vein, common fallacies and misperceptions about the world around us influence choices we make in our daily lives. In his Dictionary of Misinformation, Tom Burnam has set out to correct some of these inaccuracies and false beliefs. Among the falsehoods exposed in this book: […]

Published: Washington, D.C., 1974 In 1973, there was no such thing as “Asian American literature.” It was not a category discussed by scholars, much less a genre known by writers, booksellers, and the reading public. Then came Aiiieeeee!, published by the Howard University Press in 1974. The title, a reappropriation of the stereotypical scream of “the yellow man” depicted in popular “white American culture,” was meant to represent the cry of “Asian America, so long ignored and forcibly excluded from participation in American culture.” The editors were four young writers and intellectuals who decided to reclaim the work of fellow […]

Published: New York, 1973 At first glance, someone might wonder why the MIT Libraries haven’t withdrawn this ancient-looking volume. The paper it was printed on is cheap, and turning brown and brittle. The photos and drawings are black and white; most were provided by members of the Boston Women’s Health Collective and their friends. The book has that homemade “Sixties and Seventies look.” The front cover of this first edition bears a large black and white photograph of three women holding a handwritten sign that says, “Women Unite.” They’re not alone but are part of a demonstration in the early […]

Published: New York, 1972 Daniel Ellsberg began working for the RAND Corporation as a decisionmaking/policy consultant in 1959. In the mid-1960s he moved to the U.S. Defense Department and the Department of State, and spent two years in Vietnam observing the war. In 1967 he returned to RAND and began working on a study, sponsored by Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara, on the escalation of the war and U.S. decisionmaking in Vietnam from 1945 to 1968. The report, later to be known as the “Pentagon Papers,” revealed that Congress and the American public had been misinformed repeatedly about the actual […]