347:. He began climbing there in the 1950s and continues to climb. He made the first ascent of several classic routes including Arrow, Hawk, Moonlight, and Senté. Some of these routes sparked controversy because protection bolts were placed on rappel, a new tactic that Crowther and several others began to use at the time. The community reaction to this technique was an important part of the evolution of climbing ethics in the Shawangunks and beyond.
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fantasy of my caving, and also would be a game for the kids, and perhaps some aspects of the
Dungeons and Dragons that I had been playing. My idea was that it would be a computer game that would not be intimidating to non-computer people, and that was one of the reasons why I made it so that the player directs the game with natural language input, instead of more standardized commands. My kids thought it was a lot of fun.
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250:, the player moves around an imaginary cave system by entering simple, two-word commands and reading text describing the result. Crowther used his extensive knowledge of cave exploration as a basis for the gameplay, and there are many similarities between the locations in the game and those in Mammoth Cave, particularly its
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in
Kentucky in particular. Suddenly, I got involved in a divorce, and that left me a bit pulled apart in various ways. In particular I was missing my kids. Also the caving had stopped, because that had become awkward, so I decided I would fool around and write a program that was a re-creation in
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332:. Indeed, even during his time working at BBN, his colleagues noticed that Crowther spent a fair amount of time doing chin-ups in doorframes, which apparently helped him concentrate.
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was not a coincidence. Crowther and his first wife Pat were active and dedicated cavers in the 1960s and early 1970s—both were part of many expeditions to connect the
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development team. His implementation of a distributed distance vector routing system for the ARPAnet was an important early step in the evolution of the
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bought the part of BBN where
Crowther was working. He continued to work for Cisco until his retirement in 1997 to live in
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during the late 1950s and early 1960s, Crowther also played an important role in the development of rock climbing in the
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Following his divorce from his wife, Crowther used his spare time to develop a text-based adventure game in
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Somewhere Nearby is
Colossal Cave: Examining Will Crowther's Original "Adventure" in Code and in Kentucky
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and every year helped teach rock climbing to beginners. He continued doing that each spring until 2013.
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273:(SAIL) where he worked. Over the following decade the game gained in popularity, being ported to many
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220:. He created it as a diversion his daughters Sandy and Laura could enjoy when they came to visit.
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541:"This Woman Inspired One of the First Hit Video Games by Mapping the World's Longest Cave"
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from 1976 to 1983. During this period he met and married Nancy
Sanders Burnes in 1980 in
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The basic game structure invented by
Crowther (and based in part on the example of the
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cave systems. Pat played a key role in the
September 9, 1972 expedition that finally
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and elsewhere. In 1983 he left Xerox and went back to Bolt
Beranek and Newman in
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Dibbell, Julian: "A Marketable Wonder - Spelunking the
American Imagination",
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Yankee Rock & Ice: A History of
Climbing in the Northeastern United States
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from 1975 onward, a seminal computer game that influenced the first decade of
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Peterson, Dale: "Genesis II: Creation and Recreation with Computers", (1983).
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as the title that inspired them to create their game. They later founded
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Laura Waterman; Guy Waterman; Michael Wejchert (October 1, 2018).
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292:) was carried forward by the designers of later adventure games.
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Computing in the Middle Ages: A View From the Trenches 1955-1983
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In the spring of 1976, he was contacted by Stanford researcher
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at the time, and also I had been actively exploring in caves -
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I had been involved in a non-computer role-playing game called
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section. In 1975, Crowther released the game on the early
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Twisty Little Passages: An Approach To Interactive Fiction
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Twisty Little Passages: An Approach to Interactive Fiction
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Twisty Little Passages: An Approach to Interactive Fiction
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Twisty Little Passages: An Approach to Interactive Fiction
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Roger W. Brucker; Richard A. Watson (February 16, 1987).
441:(Interview). Interviewed by Judy O'Neill. Cambridge, MA:
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Where Wizards Stay Up Late: The Origins Of The Internet
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IMP Team (left to right): Truett Thatch, Bill Bartell,
100:(until 1976), Nancy S. Crowther (married 1980-present)
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Game Developers Conference Pioneer Award recipients
308:and published a series of popular text adventures.
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515:Genesis II, Creation and Recreation with Computers
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649:Katie Hafner; Matthew Lyon (January 21, 1998).
518:. Reston Publishing Company. pp. 187–188.
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177:(BBN), where he was part of the original small
711:Brucker, Roger W.; Watson, Richard A. (1976).
258:system, of which BBN was a prime contractor.
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271:Stanford Artificial Intelligence Laboratory
169:During the early 1970s, Crowther worked at
162:, Ben Barker, Marty Thorpe, Will Crowther,
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18:Computer programmer and caver (born 1936)
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277:, including personal-computer platform
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194:Massachusetts Institute of Technology
69:Massachusetts Institute of Technology
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430:"An Interview with William Crowther"
452:from the original on April 30, 2018
655:. Simon and Schuster. p. 98.
539:Evans, Claire L. (July 15, 2020).
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682:. Stackpole Books. p. 195.
401:Robert Kahn (computer scientist)
741:Where Wizards Stay Up Late, by
296:and the team that created the
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831:American video game designers
730:. Cambridge: The MIT Press.
491:. MIT Press. pp. 85–97.
470:: CS1 maint: date and year (
371:. He became active with the
804:Digital Humanities Quarterly
386:with his second wife Nancy.
316:The location of the game in
836:Interactive fiction writers
109:(born 1936) is an American
46:1936 (age 87–88)
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628:. SIU Press. p. 299.
121:. He is the co-creator of
758:The Soul of a New Machine
601:. MIT Press. p. 89.
571:. MIT Press. p. 88.
443:Charles Babbage Institute
373:Appalachian Mountain Club
188:Crowther met and married
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369:Cambridge, Massachusetts
244:, or more simply called
726:Montfort, Nick (2003).
438:University of Minnesota
175:Bolt Beranek and Newman
124:Colossal Cave Adventure
826:Video game programmers
595:Nick Montfort (2005).
565:Nick Montfort (2005).
512:Dale Peterson (1983).
485:Nick Montfort (2005).
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196:, where he received a
192:while studying at the
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361:Palo Alto, California
173:and internet-pioneer
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785:IMP team photo, BBN
229:Dungeons and Dragons
715:. New York: Knopf.
355:Crowther worked at
335:As a member of the
330:made the connection
111:computer programmer
84:Computer programmer
428:(March 12, 1990).
384:Delanson, New York
171:defense contractor
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807:1:2, summer 2007.
797:Jerz, D.G. 2007.
778:978-1-4033-1517-5
689:978-0-8117-6767-5
662:978-0-684-83267-8
635:978-0-8093-1322-8
608:978-0-262-63318-5
578:978-0-262-63318-5
525:978-0-8359-2434-4
498:978-0-262-63318-5
426:Crowther, William
275:operating systems
131:and inspired the
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98:Patricia Crowther
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351:Later career
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233:Mammoth Cave
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190:Pat Crowther
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119:rock climber
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60:Willie, Will
15:
846:1936 births
753:Steven Levy
396:Frank Heart
341:Shawangunks
326:Flint Ridge
160:Frank Heart
156:Robert Kahn
152:Dave Walden
815:Categories
412:References
357:Xerox PARC
294:Marc Blank
136:game genre
550:March 23,
302:Adventure
263:Don Woods
247:Adventure
216:on BBN's
208:Adventure
204:in 1958.
142:Biography
94:Spouse(s)
456:July 29,
447:Archived
390:See also
365:Yosemite
252:Bedquilt
183:Internet
545:OneZero
322:Mammoth
306:Infocom
256:ARPAnet
214:Fortran
202:physics
179:ARPAnet
776:
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312:Caving
290:parser
267:PDP-10
218:PDP-10
117:, and
760:, by
751:, by
450:(PDF)
433:(PDF)
288:text
286:ELIZA
115:caver
88:caver
774:ISBN
732:ISBN
717:ISBN
684:ISBN
657:ISBN
630:ISBN
603:ISBN
573:ISBN
552:2022
520:ISBN
493:ISBN
472:link
458:2020
324:and
298:Zork
279:CP/M
198:B.S.
43:Born
769:by
343:in
240:In
200:in
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587:^
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Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License. Additional terms may apply.
