1971: The Oregon Trail (if50.substack.com)
In the midst of the cold but snowless Minnesota December of 1971, a student teacher named Don Rawitsch wheeled a bulky teletypewriter into his 8th grade history class. Students gathered around curiously as he plugged in power and phone cables, switched on the humming machine, and dialed the number on a rotary pad that would connect him to a $100,000 minicomputer fifty miles away. The students, Mr. Rawitsch said, were going to play a game.