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69-464: In the 1970s, one could play correspondence chess in a PLATO System program called 'chess3'. Several users used chess3 regularly; often a particular user would make several moves per day, sometimes with several games simultaneously in progress. In theory one could use chess3 to play a complete game of chess in one sitting, but chess3 was not usually used this way. PLATO was not connected to Internet predecessor ARPANET in any way that allowed mass use by

138-504: A CDC data center for multiuser programs. To make the latter affordable, CDC introduced the Homelink service for $ 5 an hour. Norris continued to praise PLATO, announcing that it would be only a few years before it represented a major source of income for CDC as late as 1984. In 1986, Norris stepped down as CEO, and the PLATO service was slowly killed off. He later claimed that Micro-PLATO was one of

207-729: A CDC-based solution disappeared in the 1980s, interested educators ported the engine first to the IBM PC , and later to web -based systems. In the early 1970s, some people working in the modern foreign languages group at the University of Illinois began working on a set of Hebrew lessons, originally without good system support for leftward writing. In preparation for a PLATO demo in Tehran , that Bruce Sherwood  [ eo ] would participate in, Sherwood worked with Don Lee to implement support for leftward writing, including Persian (Farsi), which uses

276-423: A better education system, everyone using it nevertheless enjoyed it, at least. An official evaluation by an external testing agency ended with roughly the same conclusions, suggesting that everyone enjoyed using it, but it was essentially equal to an average human teacher in terms of student advancement. Of course, a computerized system equal to a human should have been a major achievement, the very concept for which

345-459: A dedicated client, there are also web-based interfaces. Users can play using an anonymous guest account or register for an account with a username. Registered users can play games rated using the Glicko rating system . Once connected, discussion takes place in a wide number of function-specific or subject-specific chat channels numbered 0 through 255. For example, channel 0 is for administrators only, 1

414-591: A dozen different networked mainframe computers . Many modern concepts in multi-user computing were first developed on PLATO, including forums, message boards, online testing, email , chat rooms, picture languages , instant messaging , remote screen sharing , and multiplayer video games . PLATO was designed and built by the University of Illinois and functioned for four decades, offering coursework (elementary through university) to UIUC students, local schools, prison inmates, and other universities. Courses were taught in

483-423: A minicomputer (Williams, M.A. "A comparison of three approaches to the teaching of auditory-visual discrimination, sight singing and music dictation to college music students: A traditional approach, a Kodaly approach, and a Kodaly approach augmented by computer-assisted instruction," University of Illinois, unpublished). This device worked, yet was slow with variable access times. In 1981, Nan T. Watanabe researched

552-565: A new CDC Cyber machine. CDC announced the acquisition soon after, claiming that by 1985, 50% of the company's income would be related to PLATO services. Through the 1970s, CDC tirelessly promoted PLATO, both as a commercial tool and one for re-training unemployed workers in new fields. Norris refused to give up on the system, and invested in several non-mainstream courses, including a crop-information system for farmers, and various courses for inner-city youth. CDC even went as far as to place PLATO terminals in some shareholder's houses, to demonstrate

621-413: A physicist at the University of Illinois, suggested a computerised learning system to William Everett, the engineering college dean, who, in turn, recommended that Daniel Alpert, another physicist, convene a meeting about the matter with engineers, administrators, mathematicians, and psychologists. After weeks of meetings they were unable to agree on a single design. Before conceding failure, Alpert mentioned

690-541: A possibility. Michael Moore, of the University of Utah , and Richard Nash recognised the potential of an Internet chess server and created its first incarnation, hosted at lark.utah.edu and accessible through telnet . The official opening date of the ICS was January 15, 1992. John Chanak, William Kish, and Aaron Putnam moved the server to a host machine at Carnegie Mellon University in July 1992, and took over its operation. Although it

759-594: A program called "The Enforcer" was written to run as a background process to regulate or disable game play at most sites and times – a precursor to parental-style control systems that regulate access based on content rather than security considerations. In September 2006 the Federal Aviation Administration retired its PLATO system, the last system that ran the PLATO software system on a CDC Cyber mainframe , from active duty. Existing PLATO-like systems now include NovaNET and Cyber1 .org. By early 1976,

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828-441: A range of subjects, including Latin, chemistry, education, music, Esperanto, and primary mathematics. The system included a number of features useful for pedagogy, including text overlaying graphics, contextual assessment of free-text answers, depending on the inclusion of keywords, and feedback designed to respond to alternative answers. Rights to market PLATO as a commercial product were licensed by Control Data Corporation (CDC),

897-513: A service which had been free. Several former ICS programmers saw the move as exploiting their work. On the day its rebranding was announced, programmers created a mailing list focused on developing an alternative, though work had been in progress, using Nash's original code, since Sleator initially revealed his commercialization plans. Several developers contributed, led by Nash, Henrik Gram, David Flynn, and Chris Petroff. The effort reacting to commercialization led to servers in several places around

966-440: A service-based company instead of a hardware one, and was increasingly convinced that computer-based education would become a major market in the future. At the same time, Norris was troubled by the unrest of the late 1960s, and felt that much of it was due to social inequalities that needed to be addressed. PLATO offered a solution by providing higher education to segments of the population that would otherwise never be able to afford

1035-408: A study that used computer-assisted instruction for rhythm perception. Placek used the random access audio device attached to a PLATO III terminal for which he developed music notation fonts and graphics. Students majoring in elementary education were asked to (1) recognize elements of rhythm notation, and (2) listen to rhythm patterns and identify their notations. This was the first known application of

1104-686: A tour of the PLATO system at the University of Illinois. At this time, they were shown parts of the system, such as the Insert Display/Show Display (ID/SD) application generator for pictures on PLATO (later translated into a graphics-draw program on the Xerox Star workstation); the Charset Editor for "painting" new characters (later translated into a "Doodle" program at PARC); and the Term Talk and Monitor Mode communications programs. Many of

1173-522: A university education. Norris provided CERL with machines on which to develop their system in the late 1960s. In 1971, he set up a new division within CDC to develop PLATO "courseware", and eventually many of CDC's own initial training and technical manuals ran on it. In 1974, PLATO was running on in-house machines at CDC headquarters in Minneapolis , and in 1976, they purchased the commercial rights in exchange for

1242-611: Is a simple, text-based variant of the TELNET protocol. It is sparsely documented and not standardised, although a few reference implementations and several clients exist. In addition to standalone clients, many servers also offer websites that can be used directly from a Web browser . These are popular with new users and users of public computers. Over the years, several Internet chess servers have been created. The most popular are Chess.com , Chesshub.com , Lichess , ICC , Chess Craft , Playchess.com , FICS and Chesscube . Chess

1311-481: Is also among the games previously offered by non-specialist site Yahoo! Games . PLATO System PLATO ( Programmed Logic for Automatic Teaching Operations ), also known as Project Plato and Project PLATO , was the first generalized computer-assisted instruction system. Starting in 1960, it ran on the University of Illinois 's ILLIAC I computer. By the late 1970s, it supported several thousand graphics terminals distributed worldwide, running on nearly

1380-445: Is for general help, 50 is general chat, and 49 is for tournaments. Players can choose any time control and increment. In addition to standard chess, FICS hosts several chess variants , including suicide , loser's , atomic , wild (including chess960 ), bughouse , and crazyhouse . FICS relays major live chess events. A bot takes the moves in ongoing games and relays them to special demo accounts on FICS. These demo accounts bear

1449-527: Is its place in the origins of online community. This was made possible by PLATO's groundbreaking communication and interface capabilities, features whose significance is only lately being recognized by computer historians. PLATO Notes, created by David R. Woolley in 1973, was among the world's first online message boards , and years later became the direct progenitor of Lotus Notes . PLATO's plasma panels were well suited to games, although its I/O bandwidth (180 characters per second or 60 graphic lines per second)

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1518-530: Is still maintained and administered by volunteers. FICS never matched the popularity of ICC, but as of 2012 it had about 900 people logged in at any given time, and by August 2014 it had over 650,000 registered accounts. In 2016, 50,000 active players played a total of 23 million games. In a 2024 book, Peter Doggers drew a comparison between the FICS and ICC rivalry and the later Lichess vs. Chess.com rivalry, with one side committed to free and open principles and

1587-485: The Internet Chess Club , or ICC, and charging a yearly membership fee of $ US 49 ($ US 59.95 in 2007). This announcement was highly controversial among existing members. Many volunteers who had contributed in various ways to the flourishing of ICS were upset that anyone would attempt to profit from their efforts. Active players on the server who were used to the service being provided without charge were not pleased with

1656-408: The University of Illinois School of Basic Medical Sciences (now, the University of Illinois College of Medicine ) devised a large number of basic science lessons and a self-testing system for first-year students. However the most popular "courseware" remained their multi-user games and role-playing video games such as dnd , although it appears CDC was uninterested in this market. As the value of

1725-516: The 1944 G.I. Bill that provided free college education to World War II veterans, higher education was limited to a minority of the US population, though only 9% of the population was in the military. The trend towards greater enrollment was notable by the early 1950s, and the problem of providing instruction for the many new students was a serious concern to university administrators. To wit, if computerized automation increased factory production, it could do

1794-684: The American Internet Chess Server (commonly known as the Internet Chess Server or ICS). The initial release, accessible via telnet , was hosted at the University of Utah , but over its first two years it moved repeatedly across American universities, with additional servers opening and connecting to each other through Nash's Internet Ratings Server. The software was coded, supported, and operated by volunteers. Daniel Sleator , professor of computer science at Carnegie Mellon University , took over operation in July 1992 and improved

1863-535: The Arabic script. There was no funding for this work, which was undertaken only due to Sherwood's personal interest, and no curriculum development occurred for either Persian or Arabic. However, Peter Cole, Robert Lebowitz, and Robert Hart used the new system capabilities to re-do the Hebrew lessons. The PLATO hardware and software supported the design and use of one's own 8-by-16 characters, so most languages could be displayed on

1932-495: The PLATO random-access audio device to computer-based music instruction. Study participants were interviewed about the experience and found it both valuable and enjoyable. Of particular value was PLATO’s immediate feedback. Though participants noted shortcomings in the quality of the audio, they generally indicated that they were able to learn the basic skills of rhythm notation recognition. These PLATO IV terminal included many new devices and yielded two notable music projects: By

2001-533: The University of Illinois School of Music PLATO Project. From 1970 to 1994, the University of Illinois (U of I) School of Music explored the use of the Computer-based Education Research Laboratory (CERL) PLATO computer system to deliver online instruction in music. Led by G. David Peters, music faculty and students worked with PLATO’s technical capabilities to produce music-related instructional materials and experimented with their use in

2070-563: The addition of the membership fee. A handful of programmers who had worked on the original ICS became unhappy with what they saw as the commoditization of their project. They formed the Free Internet Chess Server (FICS), and continued to allow everyone to have access to all features for free. In 1996, John Fanning , uncle of Napster founder Shawn Fanning , started Chess.net, a commercial Internet chess server to rival ICS. Both services remain operational today. The ICS protocol

2139-531: The checklists which were reviewed and evaluated later in the training session. In 1978, William H. Sanders adapted Froseth’s program for delivery using the PLATO IV system. Sanders transferred the slides to microfiche for rear-projection through the PLATO IV terminal’s plasma display. In timed drills, trainees viewed the slides, then filled in the checklists by touching them on the display. The program gave immediate feedback and kept aggregate records. Trainees could vary

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2208-444: The clarinet. They used a four-track tape recorder interfaced to a computer to provide pre-recorded audio passages. Messages were recorded on three tracks and inaudible signals on the fourth track with two hours of play/record time available. This research further demonstrated that computer-controlled audio with four-track tape was possible. In 1979, Williams used a digitally controlled cassette tape recorder that had been interfaced to

2277-509: The code. One of his primary contributions was a mechanism to adjust clock times for the effects of internet lag. He announced plans to commercialize the service, copyrighted the code in 1994, and rebranded it as the Internet Chess Club (ICC) in 1995, charging membership fees. Sleator's decision to commercialize the ICS was controversial, outraging members who felt the internet should be free and open, or who simply did not want to pay for

2346-409: The concept of the system. In the early 1980s, CDC started heavily advertising the service, apparently due to increasing internal dissent over the now $ 600 million project, taking out print and even radio ads promoting it as a general tool. The Minneapolis Tribune was unconvinced by their ad copy and started an investigation of the claims. In the end, they concluded that while it was not proven to be

2415-449: The courseware was averaging $ 300,000 per delivery hour, many times what the CERL was paying for similar products. This meant that CDC had to charge high prices in order to recoup their costs, prices that made the system unattractive. The reason, he suggested, for these high prices was that CDC had set up a division that had to keep itself profitable via courseware development, forcing them to raise

2484-553: The early pioneers in CBT were aiming. A computer could serve all the students in a school for the cost of maintaining it, and wouldn't go on strike. However, CDC charged $ 50 an hour for access to their data center, in order to recoup some of their development costs, making it considerably more expensive than a human on a per-student basis. PLATO was, therefore, a failure as a profitable commercial enterprise, although it did find some use in large companies and government agencies willing to invest in

2553-404: The feasibility of computer-assisted music instruction using computer-controlled pre-recorded audio. She surveyed audio hardware that could interface with a computer system. Random-access audio devices interfaced to PLATO IV terminals were also available. There were issues with sound quality due to dropouts in the audio. Regardless, Watanabe deemed consistent fast access to audio clips critical to

2622-519: The first implementations of multi-user time-sharing . The PLATO system was re-designed, between 1963 and 1969; PLATO III allowed "anyone" to design new lesson modules using their TUTOR programming language , conceived in 1967 by biology graduate student Paul Tenczar . Built on a CDC 1604 , given to them by William Norris , PLATO III could simultaneously run up to 20 terminals, and was used by local facilities in Champaign–Urbana that could enter

2691-488: The flexibility to set their own practice hours, completed significantly more practice exercises, and did so in significantly less time. In 1967, Allvin and Kuhn used a four-channel tape recorder interfaced to a computer to present pre-recorded models to judge sight-singing performances. In 1969, Ned C. Deihl and Rudolph E. Radocy conducted a computer-assisted instruction study in music that included discriminating aural concepts related to phrasing, articulation, and rhythm on

2760-511: The frequent complaint that players would lose blitz games on time due to network lag. In 1994, he copyrighted the code, and began receiving purchase offers from companies wanting to commercialise the server. There were questions about whether Sleator was right to claim that the ICS was his intellectual property, since he did not code the original server, although he had made substantial improvements to its code. On March 1, 1995, Sleator announced his intentions to commercialise ICS himself, renaming it

2829-564: The graphics screen (including those written right-to-left). A PLATO-compatible music language known as OPAL (Octave-Pitch-Accent-Length) was developed for these synthesizers, as well as a compiler for the language, two music text editors, a filing system for music binaries, programs to play the music binaries in real time, and print musical scores, and many debugging and compositional aids. A number of interactive compositional programs have also been written. Gooch's peripherals were heavily used for music education courseware as created, for example, by

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2898-417: The group receiving traditional instruction in instrument identification. The study did, however, demonstrate that use of random-access audio in computer-assisted instruction in music was feasible. By 1988, with the spread of micro-computers and their peripherals, the University of Illinois School of Music PLATO Project was renamed The Illinois Technology-based Music Project. Researchers subsequently explored

2967-450: The introduction of PLATO IV, Bitzer declared general success, claiming that the goal of generalized computer instruction was now available to all. However, the terminals were very expensive (about $ 12,000). The PLATO IV terminal had several major innovations: Bruce Parello , a student at the University of Illinois in 1972, created the first digital emojis on the PLATO IV system. Early in 1972, researchers from Xerox PARC were given

3036-439: The manufacturer on whose mainframe computers the PLATO IV system was built. CDC President William Norris planned to make PLATO a force in the computer world, but found that marketing the system was not as easy as hoped. PLATO nevertheless built a strong following in certain markets, and the last production PLATO system was in use until 2006. PLATO was either the first or an earlier example of many now-common technologies: Before

3105-437: The matter to laboratory assistant Donald Bitzer , who had been thinking about the problem, suggesting he could build a demonstration system. Project PLATO was established soon afterwards, and in 1960, the first system, PLATO I, operated on the local ILLIAC I computer. It included a television set for display and a special keyboard for navigating the system's function menus; PLATO II, in 1961, featured two users at once, one of

3174-521: The mid-1970s, James O. Froseth (University of Michigan) had published training materials that taught instrumental music teachers to visually identify typical problems demonstrated by beginning band students. For each instrument, Froseth developed an ordered checklist of what to look for (i.e., posture, embouchure, hand placement, instrument position, etc.) and a set of 35mm slides of young players demonstrating those problems. In timed class exercises, trainees briefly viewed slides and recorded their diagnoses on

3243-408: The music curriculum. Peters began his work on PLATO III. By 1972, the PLATO IV system made it technically possible to introduce multimedia pedagogies that were not available in the marketplace until years later. Between 1974 and 1988, 25 U of I music faculty participated in software curriculum development and more than 40 graduate students wrote software and assisted the faculty in its use. In 1988,

3312-450: The names of the players in the event. Users and guests on FICS can watch the games in progress and chat about the games with each other. The relay has covered every single World Chess Championship since its inception. Other major relays include the yearly relay of Wijk aan Zee , Morelia-Linares and Amber Melody . The web-based Lichess platform obtains its tournament relays via FICS. All games played by registered users are recorded by

3381-424: The new technologies they saw were adopted and improved upon, when these researchers returned to Palo Alto, California . They subsequently transferred improved versions of this technology to Apple Inc. As PLATO IV reached production quality, William Norris (CDC) became increasingly interested in it as a potential product. His interest was twofold. From a strict business perspective, he was evolving Control Data into

3450-516: The original PLATO IV system had 950 terminals giving access to more than 3500 contact hours of courseware, and additional systems were in operation at CDC and Florida State University . Eventually, over 12,000 contact hours of courseware was developed, much of it developed by university faculty for higher education. PLATO courseware covers a full range of high-school and college courses, as well as topics such as reading skills, family planning, Lamaze training and home budgeting. In addition, authors at

3519-637: The other offering more features for a fee. FICS is accessible via telnet and was text-only by default. Before graphical interfaces, users would see a board created by ASCII characters, with the lines of the board created by hyphens and pipes , and pieces represented by letters. Whereas ICC has dedicated, proprietary graphical interfaces, several have been developed for FICS, with none having official status. The earliest were XICS and XBoard , with subsequent programs including WinBoard , BabasChess, Jin, Thief, Raptor, eboard, PyChess , and JavaBoard. Though built with pre-web technology which typically requires

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3588-417: The prices in order to keep their headcount up during slow periods. Intel 8080 microprocessors were introduced in the new PLATO V terminals. They could download small software modules and execute them locally. It was a way to augment the PLATO courseware with rich animation and other sophisticated capabilities. Although PLATO was designed for computer-based education, perhaps its most enduring legacy

3657-399: The private sector. Free Internet Chess Server The Free Internet Chess Server (FICS) is a volunteer-run internet chess server . It launched in 1995, in response to the commercialization of the original American Internet Chess Server (ICS). In January 1992, Michael Moore of the University of Utah and Richard Nash started the first online service facilitating live chess games,

3726-485: The private sector. Their influence can be traced to numerous multimedia pedagogies, products, and services in use today, especially by musicians and music educators. In 1969, G. David Peters began researching the feasibility of using PLATO to teach trumpet students to play with increased pitch and rhythmic precision. He created an interface for the PLATO III terminal. The hardware consisted of (1) filters that could determine

3795-531: The project broadened its focus beyond PLATO to accommodate the increasing availability and use of microcomputers. The broader scope resulted in renaming the project to The Illinois Technology-based Music Project. Work in the School of Music continued on other platforms after the CERL PLATO system shutdown in 1994. Over the 24-year life of the music project, its many participants moved into educational institutions and into

3864-406: The public, and consequently, chess3 was and still is relatively unknown to the public. In the eighties, chess play by email was still fairly novel. Latency with email was less significant than with traditional correspondence chess via paper letters. Often one could complete a dozen moves in a week. As network technology improved, public, widespread use of a centralised server for live play became

3933-536: The reasons PLATO got off-track. They had started on the TI-99/4A, but then Texas Instruments pulled the plug and they moved to other systems like the Atari, who soon did the same. He felt that it was a waste of time anyway, as the system's value was in its online nature, which Micro-PLATO lacked initially. Bitzer was more forthright about CDC's failure, blaming their corporate culture for the problems. He noted that development of

4002-552: The same for academic instruction. The USSR's 1957 launching of the Sputnik I artificial satellite energized the United States' government into spending more on science and engineering education. In 1958, the U.S. Air Force's Office of Scientific Research had a conference about the topic of computer instruction at the University of Pennsylvania ; interested parties, notably IBM , presented studies. Around 1959, Chalmers W. Sherwin ,

4071-453: The study design and selected this device for the study. Watanabe’s computer-based drill-and-practice program taught elementary music education students to identify musical instruments by sound. Students listened to randomly selected instrument sounds, identified the instrument they heard, and received immediate feedback. Watanabe found no significant difference in learning between the group who learned through computer-assisted drill programs and

4140-454: The system with their custom terminals . The only remote PLATO III terminal was located near the state capitol in Springfield, Illinois at Springfield High School. It was connected to the PLATO III system by a video connection and a separate dedicated line for keyboard data. PLATO I, II, and III were funded by small grants from a combined Army-Navy-Air Force funding pool. By the time PLATO III

4209-467: The technology. An attempt to mass-market the PLATO system was introduced in 1980 as Micro-PLATO, which ran the basic TUTOR system on a CDC "Viking-721" terminal and various home computers. Versions were built for the TI-99/4A , Atari 8-bit computers , Zenith Z-100 and, later, Radio Shack TRS-80 , and IBM Personal Computer . Micro-PLATO could be used stand-alone for normal courses, or could connect to

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4278-414: The timing of the exercises and repeat them whenever they wished. Sanders and Froseth subsequently conducted a study to compare traditional classroom delivery of the program to delivery using PLATO. The results showed no significant difference between the delivery methods for a) student post-test performance and b) their attitudes toward the training materials. However, students using the computer appreciated

4347-410: The true pitch of a tone, and (2) a counting device to measure tone duration. The device accepted and judged rapid notes, two notes trilled, and lip slurs. Peters demonstrated that judging instrumental performance for pitch and rhythmic accuracy was feasible in computer-assisted instruction. By 1970, a random access audio device was available for use with PLATO III. In 1972, Robert W. Placek conducted

4416-544: The use of emerging, commercially available technologies for music instruction until 1994. Educators and students used the PLATO System for music instruction at other educational institutions including Indiana University , Florida State University , and the University of Delaware . Many alumni of the University of Illinois School of Music PLATO Project gained early hands-on experience in computing and media technologies and moved into influential positions in both education and

4485-547: The world and in the United States, with the latter consolidating to form the Free Internet Chess Server, which launched on March 5, 1995. Its tagline is "we do it for the game--not the money". After a few months, it had 1,500 members. In 1998, the Free Internet Chess Organization (FICS) was organized as a nonprofit organization , although the formal entity was dissolved in 2007. The server

4554-418: Was buggy and suffered from lag problems, the server was popular among a small group of chess enthusiasts. Over time, many features were added to the ICS, such as Elo ratings and support for graphical clients, and the server was made more stable. In late 1992, Daniel Sleator , professor of computer science at Carnegie Mellon University, took over management of the ICS. He addressed, among other issues,

4623-469: Was in operation, everyone involved was convinced it was worthwhile to scale up the project. Accordingly, in 1967, the National Science Foundation granted the team steady funding, allowing Alpert to set up the Computer-based Education Research Laboratory (CERL) at the University of Illinois Urbana–Champaign campus . The system was capable of supporting 20 time-sharing terminals. In 1972, with

4692-418: Was inspired by PLATO's dungeon games (see below), in turn inspiring Doom and Quake . Thousands of multiplayer online games were developed on PLATO from around 1970 through the 1980s, with the following notable examples: PLATO's communication tools and games formed the basis for an online community of thousands of PLATO users, which lasted for well over twenty years. PLATO's games became so popular that

4761-541: Was relatively slow. By virtue of 1500 shared 60-bit variables per game (initially), it was possible to implement online games . Because it was an educational computer system, most of the user community were keenly interested in games. In much the same way that the PLATO hardware and development platform inspired advances elsewhere (such as at Xerox PARC and MIT), many popular commercial and Internet games ultimately derived their inspiration from PLATO's early games. As one example, Castle Wolfenstein by PLATO alum Silas Warner

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