Thu. 12/02 - How a College Student Invented Oregon Trail 50 Years Ago

Cool Stuff Daily

Reggie Risseeuw and Marques Pfaff

Society & Culture, News, Tech News, Science

4.6 • 739 Ratings

🗓️ 2 December 2021

⏱️ 16 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

How a twenty-one-year-old student-teacher and his roommates created Oregon Trail fifty years ago, and never made a cent from their creation. Plus, a letter Catherine the Great wrote in favor of vaccinations just sold for $1.3 million. And, for one night only, you can stay in the original Home Alone house. Sponsors: Tentree, Use code KOTTKE to get 15% off at tentree.com Lendtable, Use code KOTTKE at Lendtable.com to get an extra $50 added to your Lendtable balance Links: ‘Oregon Trail’ at 50: How Three Teachers Created the Computer Game That Inspired — and Diverted — Generations of Students (The 74 Million) Oregon Trail game history: An interview with the inventor, Don Rawitsch. (Slate) Watch the creators of retro gaming classic Oregon Trail reminisce in a now-retro video (A/V Club) The Oregon Trail emulator (Archive.Org) Oregon Trail Gets A Makeover With More Accurate Native American Representation (NPR) Miracle Workers (TBS) George Washington and the First Mass Military Inoculation (Library of Congress) Catherine the Great Letter Supporting Inoculations Sells for $1.3 Million (NY Times) Catherine the Great's Letter Endorsing Vaccines Sold at Auction (Mental Floss) 'Home Alone' house will be on Airbnb for one night only this month (NBC News) The 'Home Alone' house is on Airbnb. Merry Christmas, ya filthy animal. (Mashable) In Denmark, a snow storm means people overnight in an IKEA (AP) Kottke.Org Jackson Bird on Twitter See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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0:28.7	welcome to the cocky ride home for thursday, December 2nd, 2021. I'm Jackson Bird today.
0:42.6	How a 21-year-old student teacher and his roommates created Oregon Trail 50 years ago and never made a cent from their creation.
0:52.7	Plus, a letter Catherine the Great wrote in favor of vaccinations
0:56.5	just sold for $1.3 million. And for one night only, you can stay in the original Home Alone
1:05.1	House. Here are some of the cool things from the news today. This year is the 50th anniversary of the cool things from the news today.
1:17.5	This year is the 50th anniversary of the Oregon Trail, the game, that is.
1:22.8	The actual Oregon Trail got started around 1811, so we're about 200 years out there. But the historical simulator game got its start all the way back in 1971, five years before the rise of the personal computer and about a year before even TV-based computer games.
1:35.7	The first version of it was on a teletype machine at Jordan Junior High School in Minneapolis and lasted for just five days.
1:43.4	A teletype, by the way, looked like electric
1:46.3	typewriters, kind of. There was no screen, and it would connect via a phone line to a mainframe
1:51.5	computer usually miles away, and it could receive and send messages from that computer.
1:57.1	And actually, the original, original version of the Oregon Trail was going to be a board game.
2:03.1	But when 21-year-old student teacher Don Rawwich, who conceived of the idea as a way to interest
2:08.2	his students in a lesson on Westward expansion, showed it to his roommate and fellow teaching
2:12.8	student at Carleton College, that roommate, Bill Heineman, said they should make it an application for a
2:18.6	computer. Heinemann, who taught math and had taken a few programming classes, got their other
2:23.9	roommate and math teacher Paul Dillenberger on board, and within 10 days, they had the whole
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