Thread by @ozm

Patricia Crowther's monumental discovery would come to be known as the Everest of cave exploration.

Little did she know, it would eventually be used to make one of the first computer games. read.medium.com/3fPCddd

A ragtag group of caving enthusiasts spent nearly 20 years investigating potential links between Kentucky’s Mammoth and Flint Ridge cave systems, trying to prove a fabled theory from one of Mammoth’s first mappers, an enslaved guide named Stephen Bishop.

read.medium.com/3fPCddd

In 1972, the team had a breakthrough.

By squeezing through a vertical crevice called “the Tight Spot,” and eventually leading a team through the route, computer programmer Patricia Crowther proved the link. read.medium.com/3fPCddd

Back home in Massachusetts, Pat and her husband Will ran a “map factory,” tracking the cartographic data each Cave Research Foundation expedition surfaced.

Not long after the connection trip, their marriage deteriorated. read.medium.com/3fPCddd

Alone and surrounded by their maps, including an extensive survey of the Bedquilt section of Mammoth the couple made together in the summer of 1974, Will began to work on a computer game.

Translated into 700 lines of FORTRAN code, the map became 'Colossal Cave Adventure,' one of the first computer games.

Now known simply as 'Adventure,' it became a phenomenon. read.medium.com/3fPCddd

'Adventure' has been celebrated, canonized, satirized.

Will Crowther, who never made another game, is now considered interactive fiction’s J. D. Salinger.

But the domestic context from which it emerged bears exploring, too. read.medium.com/3fPCddd

“[Patricia’s] presence is a spectral outline of what might have been. She has been hidden in plain sight. The same could be said about many women in the early network era.” — @TheUniverse

Read more. 👇

read.medium.com/3fPCddd