The Oregon Trail is synonymous with "edutainment"—that beloved genre of games that makes learning fun. The game, a simulation of a 19th century family's westward trek to Oregon, is famous to the point of parody. Every American school student of the past 30 years has fond (traumatic?) memories of oxen dying, wagons catching fire, loved ones drowning in the Green River, and hunters shooting 1,200 pounds of food but only carrying 100 pounds back to the wagon.
Three Minnesotan public school teachers created The Oregon Trail in 1971. At the time, computers were new to education; there were no monitors, and students played the first version of the game on a teletypewriter—an electromechanical typewriter that could communicate, via phone line, with a large, mainframe computer. The game was text-based and paper-based; a student would type out his or her commands on a roll of paper, and the computer would respond by typing back status updates.
Motherboard tracked down all three original creators—Don Rawitsch, Bill Heinemann, and Paul Dillenberger—to learn about the humble beginnings of their iconic game. Here is the origin story of The Oregon Trail, in their own words.
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