OXO on EDSAC, 1952

by Gonnagan

While researching an entry about Gomoku I came across this. An implementation of Tic-Tac-Toe (or Noughts and Crosses, as it is called in the UK), written by A.S. Douglas on the EDSAC (Electronic Delay Storage Automatic Calculator) in Cambridge. Input was given through a rotary telephone controller.

OXO is younger than NIMROD, but about the same age as A. L. Samuel’s Checkers program. Check out the Wikipedia article too, it has a nice screenshot of OXO running on a Mac EDSAC emulator.

The name Oxo was used again nearly forty years later by Andy Lawrie for a 3-dimensional Tic-Tac-Toe for Windows.