History

Bridj-It is a two-player dot-connecting game. According to Martin Gardner, it was originally invented by Professor David Gale and played with coloured pencils and paper.

In 1951, a GALE playing machine called BIRD CAGE was invented by Prof. Claude Shannon. The first BIRD CAGE used electrical circuits, switches and small light bulbs and a subsequent version used a simple analogue computer.

A similar machine was built in 1958 by two engineers, W.A. Davidson and V.C. Laferty who knew nothing of the earlier machines built by Shannon.

In 1960, HASBRO marketed the game as BRIDG-IT, a board game with raised dots and plastic bridges.

In 1993, I wrote a computer version of the game in MS Excel using macros.

In 1995 I re-wrote it in C for the Apple Mac II series (Classic OS). It was published in MacFormat magazine

December 2007: I wrote this version in PHP.