Statistics say that officially sold over 170 million copies of the game. Unofficially, probably under one billion. This game works on any computers, tablets, smartphones, phones, game consoles, there is a individual hardware devices, and sometimes runs on the most unlikely instruments of CNC machines before washing machines. Of course it's Tetris.
On the title screen shot image of the original, the very first game of Tetris, which programmer Alexey Pajitnov, who worked at the Computing Center of the USSR Academy of Sciences, created in 1984.
All figures consist of alphanumeric characters for the simple reason that the graphics on one of the first Soviet personal computers DVK-2, which was created Tetris, it was not simple. The color was not the same - only the monochrome green display and text display 80x25 characters.
Pajitnov created Tetris inspired by a board game Pentamino. Of course, neither of which millions of sales and world-famous game and then he could not think.
A year later, in 1985, 16-year-old student of the Voronezh region Vadim Gerasimov wrote a Tetris for the PC.
The program came to the West and some Russian company warning in advance, declared itself the legal owner and started selling licenses to Western companies. They say that with all this Pajitnov did not receive a penny, and past it has been more than $ 40 million. But later, justice still prevailed and the author of the game began to receive royalties.
In 1991, Alexey Pajitnov emigrated to the United States, and for many years worked at Microsoft.
In 2013, Pajitnov was in the jury of the finals of the world competition of young programmers Microsoft Imagine Cup, which was held in St. Petersburg. I was there as a representative of the press, and I managed to catch Alexei in the lobby, but it was in a hurry, so I did not have time to ask him a lot of things that I would like to learn. But the most amazing, then he definitely predicted a future that has now become real.
http://www.youtube.com/watch? v = n944bZIs5OM
Deciphering the interview:
Alex Nadozhin: Today we are talking with the great man - the inventor of the "Tetris" by Alexey Pajitnov.
Alexey Pajitnov: Well really, so great... Oh well.
AN.: Tetris whole world knows! First question. Recently, we have "dumped" a lot of different gadgets, different techniques. What do you think about it?
AP.: I think that people need to become independent and finally make use of what they really like what they need. And it will bring up the gadgets and creators because if you do not know why he is not working properly, it should just throw away.
AN.: And the fact that so many of them? The fact that the phone used to be twenty models, but now a few thousand?
AP.: This is more difficult to understand, but in the end to you, journalists, and have to evaluate things, write about them, good or bitter words. Actually, then you are in this world and the charge to orient the user.
AN.: I know that "Tetris" appeared in seventy ...
No.: AP 84 year.
AN.: On what it was written?
AP.: Pascal under RAFOS.
AN.: A computer is the first?
AP.: It was a machine DCK-2.
AN.: I worked on it.
AP.: "Electronics-60" it for some time was called, we in the EC was a "zoo".
AN.: That is, the monitor was green?
AP.: Yes, green, Fryazino.
AN.: Tell us how you use the phone now?
AP.: Moscow - an old iPhones taken away from children. In America - better phone. But I use it only as a telephone.
AN.: That is, any function does not use a smartphone?
AP.: Absolutely.
AN.: That is no tablet or smartphone? It's not yours?
AP.: I just have a separate tablet. I like things to carry out their functions.
AN.: One last question: What is your forecast what will happen with the technique in ten years - it is all the same evolution or revolution?
AP.: I think something else will. Some areas are very much advanced, and some are quite degraded. So, in general, progress and is moving all the time. I very much hope that the AI still come to the rescue because they have become very sophisticated device. They need to be much more friendly to humans and with some understanding. Only quite a powerful artificial intelligence can do it. Memory is now enough. There is no reason not to include this in the intelligence unit.
It was told six years ago!
Now about the same artificial intelligence, whose popularity is predicted Pajitnov, shout "of each iron." Intelligence built into the processor smartphones, cameras and much more.
Still, he's a genius.
© 2019 Alex Nadozhin