We didn't end up making it to the previously GSW-mentioned Vintage Computer Festival in the Bay Area at the weekend, but luckily enough, Alex Handy did, and he's blogged about it in some detail on Gism.net.

As he notes: "The greatest thing about the Vintage Computer Festival is the chance to play Spacewar with Steve Russell. On an original PDP-1. There were only 50 of these machines ever made, and 30 of them went to International Telephone and Telegraph."

Handy continues: "So, Russell said he wrote the game originally to show how ships would move through space. As it evolved, it changed and added new features, like the Sun, hyperspace, and the possibility of establishing a stable orbit 3 seconds into play." There's also an embedded video talking to Steve Russell, alongside lots of gorgeous mainframe computer photo opps - yay.