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Sinclair ZX81
Type
Home computer
Release date
5 March 1981; 36 years ago[1]
Introductory price
£49.95 kit, 2017 prices)
Discontinued
1984
Units sold
More than 1.5 million[3]
Operating system
Sinclair BASIC[4]
CPU
Z80 at 3.25 MHz[4]
Memory
1 KB (64 KB max. 56 KB usable)[4]
Storage
External cassette tape recorder at a claimed 250 bps[4] or an average 300 bps[5]
Display
Monochrome display on UHF television[4]
Graphics
24 lines × 32 characters or
64 × 48 pixels graphics mode[4]
Power
9V DC[4]
Dimensions
167 millimetres (6.6 in) deep by 40 millimetres (1.6 in) high[4]
Weight
350 grams (12 oz)[4]
Predecessor
ZX80
Successor
ZX Spectrum
Related articles
Timex Sinclair 1000,
Timex Sinclair 1500
The ZX81 is a home computer produced by Sinclair Research and manufactured in Scotland by Timex Corporation. It was launched in the United Kingdom in March 1981 as the successor to Sinclair's ZX80 and was designed to be a low-cost introduction to home computing for the general public. It was hugely successful, and more than 1.5 million units were sold before it was discontinued. The ZX81 found commercial success in many other countries, notably the United States, where it was initially sold as the ZX-81. Timex manufactured and distributed it under licence and enjoyed a substantial but brief boom in sales. Timex later produced its own versions of the ZX81 for the US market – the Timex Sinclair 1000 and Timex Sinclair 1500. Unauthorised clones of the ZX81 were produced in several countries.
The ZX81 was designed to be small, simple, and above all cheap, using as few components as possible to keep the cost down. Video output was to a television set rather than a dedicated monitor. Programs and data were loaded and saved onto audio tape cassettes. It had only four silicon chips on board and a mere 1 KB of memory. The machine had no power switch or any moving parts (with the exception of a VHF TV channel selector switch present on early "ZX81 USA" models and the Timex-Sinclair 1000) and used a pressure-sensitive membrane keyboard for manual input. The ZX81's limitations prompted the emergence of a flourishing market in third-party peripherals to improve its capabilities. Such limitations, however, achieved Sinclair's objective of keeping the cost of the machine as low as possible. Its distinctive case and keyboard brought its designer, Rick Dickinson, a Design Council award.
The ZX81 could be bought by mail order in kit form or pre-assembled. In what was then a major innovation, it was the first cheap mass-market home computer that could be bought from high street stores, led by W. H. Smith and soon many other retailers. The ZX81 marked the first time that computing in Britain became an activity for the general public, rather than the preserve of businesspeople and electronics hobbyists. It inspired the creation of a huge community of enthusiasts, some of whom founded their own businesses producing software and hardware for the ZX81. Many went on to play a major role in the British computer industry in later years. The ZX81's commercial success made Sinclair Research one of Britain's leading computer manufacturers and earned a fortune and an eventual knighthood for the company's founder, Sir Clive Sinclair.
Sinclair ZX81 PCB Revision 3 keyboard
The ZX81 came with 1 KB of on-board memory that could officially be expanded externally to 16 KB. Its single circuit board was housed inside a wedge-shaped plastic case measuring 167 millimetres (6.6 in) deep by 40 millimetres (1.6 in) high. The memory was provided by either a single 4118 (1024 bit × 8) or two 2114 (1024 bit × 4) RAM chips. There were only three other chips on board: a 3.5 MHz Z80A 8-bit microprocessor from NEC, an uncommitted logic array (ULA) chip from Ferranti and an 8 KB ROM providing a simple BASIC interpreter. The entire machine weighed just 350 grams (12 oz).[4] Early versions of the external RAM cartridge contained 15 KB of memory using an assortment of memory chips, while later versions contained 16 KB of chips, but the lowest addressed kilobyte was disabled.
The front part of the case is occupied by an integrated 40-key membrane keyboard displaying 20 graphic and 54 inverse video characters.[4] Each key has up to five functions, accessed via the SHIFT and FUNCTION keys or depending on context. For example, the P key combined the letter P, the " character and the BASIC commands PRINT and TAB. The ZX81 uses a standard QWERTY keyboard layout. The keyboard is mechanically very simple, consisting of 40 pressure-pad switches and 8 diodes under a plastic overlay, connected in a matrix of 8 rows and 5 columns.[6]
The ZX81's primary input/output is delivered via four sockets on the left side of the case. The machine uses an ordinary UHF television set to deliver a monochrome picture via a built-in RF modulator. It can display 24 lines of 32 characters each, and by using the selection of 2×2 block character graphics from the machine's character set offered an effective 64 × 44 pixel graphics mode, also directly addressable via BASIC using the PLOT and UNPLOT commands, leaving 2 lines free at the bottom. Two 3.5 mm jacks connect the ZX81 to the EAR (output) and MIC (input) sockets of an audio cassette recorder, enabling data to be saved or loaded. This used an unusual PWM encoding at a single frequency, giving an average rate of 307 bps nominal, varying between 400 bps for all '0's, to 250 bps for all '1's.[5] This provides a somewhat temperamental storage medium for the machine, which has no built-in storage capabilities. The ZX81 requires 420 mA of power at 7–11 V DC, delivered via a custom 9 V Sinclair DC power supply.[4]
The ULA chip, described by the ZX81 manual as the "dogsbody" of the system, has a number of key functions that competing computers shared between multiple chips and integrated circuits. These comprise:[7]
Synchronising the screen display;
Generating a 6.5 MHz clock, from which a 3.25 MHz clock is derived for the processor;
Outputting an audio signal to a cassette recorder in SAVE mode;
Processing the incoming cassette audio signal in LOAD mode;
Sensing keystrokes;
Using memory addresses provided by the CPU to decide when ROM and RAM should be active;
Controlling general system timing.
The ZX81's built-in RF modulator can output a video picture to either a UHF 625-line colour or monochrome television (used in the UK, Australia, and most western European countries). France required a slightly modified version of the machine to match the positive video modulation of SECAM sets, while the USA and Canada required a different ULA chip and modulator to cope with their 525-line VHF (NTSC) television systems. Both the ZX81 and its predecessor, the ZX80, have a significant drawback in the way that they handle visual output. Neither machine has enough processing power to run at full speed and simultaneously maintain the screen display. On the ZX80, this means that the screen goes blank every time the machine carries out a computation and causes an irritating flicker whenever a shorter computation – such as processing a keystroke – takes place.[8]
The ZX81's designers adopted an improved approach, involving the use of two modes called SLOW and FAST respectively. In SLOW mode, also called "compute and display" mode, the ZX81 concentrates on driving the display. It runs the current program for only about a quarter of the time – in effect slowing the machine down fourfold, although in practice the speed difference between FAST and SLOW modes depends on what computation is being done.[9] In FAST mode, processing occurs continuously, but the display is abandoned to its own devices – equivalent to the ZX80's standard operating mode.[10]
Another hardware quirk produced one of the most distinctive aspects of the ZX81's screen display – during loading or saving, moving zigzag stripes appear across the screen. The same pin on the ULA is used to handle the video signal and the tape output, producing the stripes as an interference pattern of sorts. The ULA cannot maintain the display during SAVE and LOAD operations, as it has to operate continuously to maintain the correct baud rate for data transfers. The interference produces the zigzag stripes.[7]
The unexpanded ZX81's tiny memory presented a major challenge to programmers. Simply displaying a full screen takes up to 793 bytes, the system variables take up another 125 bytes, and the program, input buffer and stacks need more memory on top of that.[11] Nonetheless, ingenious programmers were able to achieve a surprising amount with just 1 KB. One notable example was 1K ZX Chess by David Horne, which managed to include most of the rules of chess into only 672 bytes. The ZX81 conserved its memory to a certain extent by representing entire BASIC commands as one-byte tokens, stored as individual "characters" in the upper reaches of the machine's unique (non-ASCII) character set.[12]
The edge connector or external interface at the rear of the ZX81 is an extension of the main printed circuit board. This provides a set of address, control, and data lines that can be used to communicate with external devices.[13] Enthusiasts and a variety of third-party companies made use of this facility to create a wide range of add-ons for the ZX81.
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Corrinne Yu Halo 4 Principal Engine Programmer programs lighting, facial animation, animation, and cinematic for Halo 4.
. ROD ARMSTRONG is the programmer for the SAN FRANCISCO INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL. Here are his TOP FOUR TO SEE !
35 SHOTS OF RUM-France- Director Claire DENIS
Cast: Alex DESCAS, Mati DIOP, Gregoire COLIN, Nicole DOGUE.
SHOWTIMES: 5/1 7:00 Clay, 5/3 1:30 PFA, 5/6 9:15 KABUKI
Director DENIS always explores outsiders in French society-gays, blacks, immigrants-which will be explored in this film about 'family'. Beautifully filmed by Agnes GODARD.
HANSEL & GRETEL: South Korea
Director: Yim PHIL-SUNG
A new scary take on the old Grimm fairy tale. Spoiled kids, house in the woods, strange happenings, & twists & turns on what's what, and who's who. Stunningly filmed.
ADORATION: Canada/France
Director Atom EGOYAN
Cast: Arsinee KHANJIAN, Scott SPEEDMAN, Rachel BLANCHARD, Noam JENKINS, Devon BOSTICK.
SHOWTIMES: 4/25 6:15 KABUKI, 4/27 6:30 PFA
Rod's favorite director ATOM EGOYAN masterfully has Devon BOSTICK story telling of a terrorist plot for a class project turn into perceived reality.
REMBRANT'S J'ACCUSE-England/Netherlands
Director: Peter GREENAWAY
SHOWTIMES: 4/26 6:30 PFA, 4/27 9:20 KABUKI, 4/28 9:15 KABUKI
GREENAWAY dissects Rembrandt's painting 'The Night Watch." turning its 34 characters into life. Discussing 17th century Amsterdam and art.
===========================================================
Here is the staff's quick recommendations under some fun catagories!
INSIDE DISH: OPENING NIGHT-San Francisco's movie star BENJAMIN BRATT and brother director PETER BRATT, along with crew will show up at the CASTRO THEATRE for April 23, 7 PM OPENING NIGHT FESTIVAL HAPPENING in the five low-rider cars that are featured in the film, LA MISSION.
INSIDE DISH: San Francisco's ROBIN WILLIAMS new film, WORLD'S GREATEST DAD, will be shown in a TBA slot. It is NOT a typical film for him. Fingers crossed that he shows up for the showing!
BEST DATE MOVIE:
RUDO Y CUSI
DON'T LET ME DROWN
GO GO 70'S
500 DAYS OF SUMMER
BEST INSIGHT INTO A COUNTRY:
BURMA VJ: REPORTING FROM A CLOSED COUNTRY (Burma)
NOMAD'S LAND (Pakistan/Sri anka?Turkey)
UNMISTAKEN CHILD (Tibet)
KIMJONGILIA (South Korea)
BEST HUMOR:
SMALL CRIME
IN THE LOOP (4 Stars!)
UNTITLED
IMMACULATE CONCEPTION OF LITTLE DIZZLE
BEST ART HISTORY
REMBRANDT'S J'ACCUS-Peter Greenway
BEST INDIGNITY OF YOUTH FILM
IMMACULATE CONCEPTION OF LITTLE DIZZLE
TAKE A CHANCE MOVIE:
AUTUMN
Z32
SMALL CRIME
GASOLINE (Guatamala)
BLEAKEST FILM:
WILD FIELD
WOMAN UNDER THE INFLUENCE
(which is really CLASSIC AMERICAN BLEAK...HAHAHA)
FILM TO SEE NOT PRINTED IN SCHEDULE:
WORLD'S GREATEST DAD (Robin Williams)
FILM THAT WILL NEVER BE DISTRIBUTED BUT SHOULD BE SEEN:
KHAMSA
CONFESSIONAL (Philliphines)
CHATURANGA (India)
NEW STRUCTURE OR DIFFERENT FILM:
BULLET IN THE HEAD
CALIFORNIA COMPANY TOWN
AGE OF STUPID
MY SUICIDE
--------------------------------
Check out the full list of movies at the official website:
www.sffs.org/sf-intl-film-festival.aspx
BECOME A MEMBER:
SEE YOU AT THE FESTIVAL!
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Computer Programmer
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Richard Allen Garriott de Cayeux (né Garriott; July 4, 1961) is an English-American video-game developer and entrepreneur. He is also known by his alter egos "Lord British" in the game series Ultima and "General British" in Tabula Rasa. Garriott, who is the son of NASA astronaut Owen Garriott, was originally a game designer and programmer, and is now involved in a number of aspects of computer-game development. On October 12, 2008, Richard flew aboard the Soyuz TMA-13 mission to the International Space Station as a private astronaut,[3][4] returning 12 days later aboard Soyuz TMA-12. He became the second astronaut, and first from the U.S., to have a parent who was also a space traveler.
Garriott founded a new video-game-development company in 2009, called Portalarium.[5] His current project is Shroud of the Avatar: Forsaken Virtues where his primary role is as CEO and Creative Director. In 2011, Garriott married Laetitia de Cayeux. Both changed their last names to Garriott de Cayeux.[6]
Contents
1 Early life
2 Game design career
3 Spaceflight
4 Other accomplishments and interests
5 Awards
6 Games
7 References
8 External links
Early life
Richard Allen Garriott was born in Cambridge, England on July 4, 1961,[7][8] to Helen Mary Garriott (née Walker) and Owen Garriott, one of NASA's first scientist-astronauts (selected in NASA Astronaut Group 4), who flew on Skylab 3 and Space Shuttle mission STS-9.[9][10] Richard was raised in Nassau Bay, Texas from the age of about two months.[1][9]
What Garriott later described as "my first real exposure to computers" occurred in 1975, during his freshman year of high school at Clear Creek High School. As he wanted more experience beyond the single one-semester BASIC class the school offered, and as a fan of The Lord of the Rings and Dungeons & Dragons, Garriott convinced the school to let him create a self-directed course in programming, in which he created fantasy computer games on the school's teletype machine.[11][12] Garriott later estimated that he wrote 28 computer fantasy games during high school.[8]
In the summer of 1977, his parents sent him to the University of Oklahoma for a seven-week computer camp. Shortly after he arrived, some of the other boys attending the camp introduced themselves. When Garriott replied to their greeting of "Hi" with "Hello" they decided he sounded like he was from Britain, and gave him the nickname "British". Garriott uses the name to this day for his various gaming characters, including Ultima character Lord British and Tabula Rasa character General British;[13] however, despite his nickname and birthplace, his parents moved to Texas when he was a baby and his accent is American rather than British.[14]
Game design career
Garriott began writing computer games in 1974. His first games were created on and for teletype terminals. The code was stored on paper tape spools and the game was displayed as an ongoing print-out on the spools of printer paper produced by teletype machines. In summer 1979, Garriott worked at a ComputerLand store where he had his first encounter with Apple computers. Inspired by their video monitors with color graphics, he began to add perspective view to his own games. After he created Akalabeth for fun, the owner of the store convinced Garriott it might sell. Garriott spent US$200 printing copies of a manual and cover sheet that his mother had drawn, then he put copies of the game in Ziploc bags to sell at the store. Although Garriott sold fewer than a dozen copies of Akalabeth at the store, one copy made it to California Pacific, who signed a deal with him. The game sold over 30,000 copies, and Garriott received $5 for each copy sold.[12][15][16] Akalabeth is considered the first published Computer Role Playing Game. In the fall, Garriott entered the University of Texas at Austin, joined the school's fencing team and later joined the Society for Creative Anachronism. He created Ultima I while at the university. It was published by California Pacific Computers and sold in Ziploc plastic bags, as was common in those days.
Steve Jackson Games (SJG) maintained a friendly relationship with Garriott and, when he visited the SJG office one day, Garriott was so impressed by the artwork of Denis Loubet that he commissioned him to paint the cover of Ultima I (1980). Loubet subsequently painted many other covers for Garriott's games.[17]
In the early 1980s, Garriott continued to develop the Ultima series of computer games, eventually leaving university to author them on a full-time basis.[12] Originally programmed for the Apple II, the Ultima series later became available on several platforms. Ultima II was published by Sierra On-Line, as they were the only company that would agree to publish it in a box together with a printed cloth map. By the time he developed Ultima III, Garriott, together with his brother Robert, their father Owen and Chuck Bueche established their own video game publisher, Origin Systems, to handle publishing and distribution, in part due to controversy with Sierra over royalties for the PC port of Ultima II.[18][19][7]
Garriott, dressed as his "Lord British" persona, at the 2018 Game Developers Conference
Garriott sold Origin Systems to Electronic Arts in September 1992 for 30 million dollars.[20] In 1997, he coined the term massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG), giving a new identity to the nascent genre previously known as graphical MUDs.[21] In 1999 and 2000, EA canceled all of Origin's new development projects, including Privateer Online, and Harry Potter Online.[22][23] In the midst of these events, Garriott resigned from the company and returned to the industry by forming Destination Games in April 2000 with his brother and Starr Long (the producer of Ultima Online). Once Garriott's non-compete agreement with EA expired a year later, Destination partnered with NCsoft where he acted as a producer and designer of MMORPGs. After that, he became the CEO of NCsoft Austin, also known as NC Interactive.
Tabula Rasa failed to generate a significant amount of money during its initial release, despite its seven-year development period. On November 11, 2008, in an open letter on the Tabula Rasa website, Garriott announced his plans to leave NCsoft to pursue new interests sparked by his spaceflight experiences. Later, however, Garriott claimed that the letter was forged as a means of forcing him out of his position and that he had had no intention of leaving.[24][not in citation given (See discussion.)] Garriott reviewed and signed this announcement, but did not sign a resignation letter that had been drafted for him by NCSoft.[25] On November 24, 2008 NCsoft announced that it planned to end the live service of Tabula Rasa. The servers shut down on February 28, 2009, after a period of free play from January 10 onward for existing account holders.[26]
In July 2010, an Austin District Court awarded Garriott US$28 million in his lawsuit against NCsoft, finding that the company did not appropriately handle his departure in 2008. In October 2011, the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit affirmed the judgment.[27]
Garriott founded the company Portalarium in 2009. The company is developing Shroud of the Avatar: Forsaken Virtues, a spiritual successor to the Ultima series, with Garriott having remarked that had they been able to secure the rights to the Ultima intellectual property from Electronic Arts, the game could have become Ultima Online 2 in name.[28][29][30][31] On March 8, 2013, Portalarium launched a Kickstarter campaign[32] for Shroud of the Avatar: Forsaken Virtues.[33] An early access version of the game was released on Steam on November 24, 2014, and the game was fully released in March 2018.[34][35]
Spaceflight
In 1983 Softline reported that "Garriott wants to go into space but doesn't see it happening in the predictable future ... He has frequently joked with his father about stowing away on a spaceship, and recently his speculations have been sounding uncomfortably realistic".[7] The income from the success of Garriott's video game career allowed him to pursue his interest in spaceflight, and the sale of Origin Systems allowed him to invest in Space Adventures and purchase the ticket to become the first private citizen to fly into space. However, Garriott suffered financial setbacks in 2001 after the dot-com bubble burst, and he was forced to sell his seat to Dennis Tito.[36]
He then says he returned to making games, to make money, and once he had enough, put down a non-refundable deposit to go into space. During the mandatory medical examination, they found he had a hemangioma on his liver, which could cause potentially fatal internal bleeding if there was a rapid depressurization of a spacecraft. Told he had to either give up his large deposit, or undergo life-threatening surgery, he decided to have the operation, and now has a 16-inch scar from it. He spent a year in Russia training before he launched into space.[36]
Richard Garriott (far right) aboard the ISS on 23 October 2008 with the MIT SPHERES Satellites
On September 28, 2007, Space Adventures announced that Garriott would fly to the International Space Station in October 2008 as a self-funded private astronaut, reportedly paying $30 million USD.[3][37] On October 12, 2008, Garriott became the second second-generation space traveler (after Sergei Volkov)[38][39] and the first offspring of an American astronaut to go into space,[3][38][40] and the second person to wear the British Union flag in space.[41] The Soyuz docked with the station on October 14. His father, Owen K. Garriott, was at the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan for the launch of his son and was in attendance when a Soyuz capsule returned with his son twelve days later.[42]
Screen capture from Windows on Earth, used by Garriott on ISS to identify targets for Earth photography. (Coast of Peru)
During his spaceflight, Garriott took part in several education outreach efforts. As a part of that outreach program he worked with the free Metro newspaper in London, which provided him with a special edition containing details of British primary school student's space experiment concepts which Richard took to the ISS. The Metro has claimed as a result that it was the first newspaper in space.[43][44] He is an Amateur Radio Operator (callsign W5KWQ), and during his stay on the International Space Station (ISS), communicated with students and other Amateur Radio operators using Amateur Radio.[45] Garriott also transmitted photographs using the Amateur Radio on the International Space Station (ARISS) slow-scan television system. Garriott also placed a geocache while aboard the ISS.[46]
Garriott also worked with the Windows on Earth project, which provides an interactive, virtual view of Earth as seen from the ISS.[47] Garriott used Windows on Earth software to assist in the selection of locations on Earth to photograph, and the public were able to use the same online tool to track the ISS and see the view Richard was experiencing out an ISS window. Richard's photographs, along with images taken by his astronaut father Owen Garriott in 1973, will be available to the public through Windows on Earth, adding a personal element to studies of Earth and how Earth has changed over time.[47]
Tracy Hickman wrote a screenplay for Garriott, for the first science-fiction film shot in space, Apogee of Fear.[48]
On October 24, Russian cosmonauts of ISS Expedition 17, Sergei Volkov and Oleg Kononenko, along with private astronaut Richard Garriott, aboard Soyuz TMA-12 capsule, landed safely (ideal) at 09:36 (03:36GMT, 07:36 Moscow time), 55 miles north of Arkalyk, Kazakhstan. They were lifted to the Kazakhstan Baikonur space center by helicopter, and then flew to Zvezdny Gorodok (Star City), Moscow Region.[49][50][51][52]
On June 3, 2009, the New York Daily News announced that Garriott would officiate at the first wedding to be held in zero gravity.[53] The wedding took place in a specially modified Boeing 727-200 aircraft, G-Force One, operated by Zero Gravity Corporation, or ZERO-G, a company offering weightless flight experiences, of which he is the co-founder.[54]
In 2010 he released a documentary, Man on a Mission: Richard Garriott's Road to the Stars.[55]
Other accomplishments and interests
In 1986, Garriott helped start the Challenger Center for Space Science Education. His high school science teacher was June Scobee-Rogers, wife of Challenger Shuttle Commander Dick Scobee, who piloted the STS-51-L mission. STS-51-L was intended to carry the first teacher in space flight, before it and its crew were tragically lost on lift off. Scobee drew on Garriott's early leadership in gaming, to help design what has become approximately 50 global interactive networked facilities, where students study about and perform simulated space missions.[56]
Garriott bought the Luna 21 lander and the Lunokhod 2 rover (both currently on lunar surface) from the Lavochkin Association for $68,500 in December 1993 at a Sotheby's auction in New York[57] (although the catalog incorrectly lists lot 68A as Luna 17/Lunokhod 1).[58] Garriott notes that while UN treaties ban governmental ownership of property off earth, corporations and private citizens retain such rights. Lunokhod 2 is still in use with mirrors aligned to bounce lasers such that precise earth moon distances can be measured. With his vehicle "still in use", Garriott claims property rights to the territory surveyed by Lunokhod 2. This may be the first valid claim for private ownership of extraterrestrial territory.[59] Lunokhod 2 held the distance record for miles traveled on another planetary body, until surpassed by the NASA Opportunity Rover in 2014.[60]
Garriott acted as corner man for professional boxer and friend Jesús Chávez in his first title defense against Erik Morales in 2004.[61]
He is also an avid magician and magic collector, and appeared on the cover of the January 2008 issue of MUM, the magazine of the Society of American Magicians.[62] The issue featured an article about an event hosted at Garriott's home involving several of the world's best magicians.[63]
While not directly related to stage magic, Garriot is a fan of the collectible card game Magic: The Gathering, and designed a card in the Magic 2015 expansion set.
Garriott built a haunted house/museum at his residence called Britannia Manor in Austin, Texas.
Garriott promotes private space flight as vice-chairman of the board of directors for Space Adventures.
Garriott is a trustee of the X PRIZE Foundation.[64]
Garriott performed the first Zero-G wedding on June 20, 2009.[65]
Garriott's collections were featured on the June 10, 2012 episode of the Oddities TV series.
In 2007, he co-founded Planetary Power, Inc. with Eric C. Anderson and Miguel Forbes.[66]
Garriott received an Honorary Doctorate of Science from Queen Mary University London in 2011.[67]
Garriott provided vocals for a track on the Shooter Jennings 2016 album Countach.[68]
Garriott is an adviser of SpaceVR, a virtual reality space exploration company.[69]
Garriott is an advocate of Personal rapid transit and the system used at London's Heathrow Airport.[70]
Richard and wife Laetitia Garriott de Cayeux had their first child, Kinga Shuilong Garriott de Cayeux, on June 30, 2012.[71] Their second child, Ronin Phi Garriott de Cayeux, was born on July 28, 2014.
Awards
Garriott was named Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year Award in 1992[72]
Garriott was named one of the "15 Most Influential Players" by Computer Gaming World
Garriott was inducted into the Computer Gaming World Hall of Fame
Garriott was named "Designer of the Year" by PC Gamer
Garriott was named "Game God" by PC Gamer in 1999
Garriott became the ninth inductee into the Academy of Interactive Arts and Sciences' Hall of Fame in 2006[73]
Garriott became the sixth recipient of the Game Developers Choice Lifetime Achievement Award in 2006[74]
Garriott was named an "Industry Legend" at the UK Develop Conference in 2007
Garriott received the British Interplanetary Society's Sir Arthur Clarke Award for Best Individual Achievement in 2009[75]
Garriott received the British Interplanetary Society's Astronaut Pin given to British born astronauts in 2009[75]
Garriott received the Society of NASA Flight Surgeons Lovelace Award for Contributions to Space Medicine in 2009
Garriott was inducted into the Environmental Hall of Fame in 2010.
Corrinne Yu Halo 4 Principal Engine Programmer progams lighting, animation, facial animation, cinematic on Halo 4
Richard Allen Garriott de Cayeux (né Garriott; July 4, 1961) is an English-American video-game developer and entrepreneur. He is also known by his alter egos "Lord British" in the game series Ultima and "General British" in Tabula Rasa. Garriott, who is the son of NASA astronaut Owen Garriott, was originally a game designer and programmer, and is now involved in a number of aspects of computer-game development. On October 12, 2008, Richard flew aboard the Soyuz TMA-13 mission to the International Space Station as a private astronaut,[3][4] returning 12 days later aboard Soyuz TMA-12. He became the second astronaut, and first from the U.S., to have a parent who was also a space traveler.
Garriott founded a new video-game-development company in 2009, called Portalarium.[5] His current project is Shroud of the Avatar: Forsaken Virtues where his primary role is as CEO and Creative Director. In 2011, Garriott married Laetitia de Cayeux. Both changed their last names to Garriott de Cayeux.[6]
Contents
1 Early life
2 Game design career
3 Spaceflight
4 Other accomplishments and interests
5 Awards
6 Games
7 References
8 External links
Early life
Richard Allen Garriott was born in Cambridge, England on July 4, 1961,[7][8] to Helen Mary Garriott (née Walker) and Owen Garriott, one of NASA's first scientist-astronauts (selected in NASA Astronaut Group 4), who flew on Skylab 3 and Space Shuttle mission STS-9.[9][10] Richard was raised in Nassau Bay, Texas from the age of about two months.[1][9]
What Garriott later described as "my first real exposure to computers" occurred in 1975, during his freshman year of high school at Clear Creek High School. As he wanted more experience beyond the single one-semester BASIC class the school offered, and as a fan of The Lord of the Rings and Dungeons & Dragons, Garriott convinced the school to let him create a self-directed course in programming, in which he created fantasy computer games on the school's teletype machine.[11][12] Garriott later estimated that he wrote 28 computer fantasy games during high school.[8]
In the summer of 1977, his parents sent him to the University of Oklahoma for a seven-week computer camp. Shortly after he arrived, some of the other boys attending the camp introduced themselves. When Garriott replied to their greeting of "Hi" with "Hello" they decided he sounded like he was from Britain, and gave him the nickname "British". Garriott uses the name to this day for his various gaming characters, including Ultima character Lord British and Tabula Rasa character General British;[13] however, despite his nickname and birthplace, his parents moved to Texas when he was a baby and his accent is American rather than British.[14]
Game design career
Garriott began writing computer games in 1974. His first games were created on and for teletype terminals. The code was stored on paper tape spools and the game was displayed as an ongoing print-out on the spools of printer paper produced by teletype machines. In summer 1979, Garriott worked at a ComputerLand store where he had his first encounter with Apple computers. Inspired by their video monitors with color graphics, he began to add perspective view to his own games. After he created Akalabeth for fun, the owner of the store convinced Garriott it might sell. Garriott spent US$200 printing copies of a manual and cover sheet that his mother had drawn, then he put copies of the game in Ziploc bags to sell at the store. Although Garriott sold fewer than a dozen copies of Akalabeth at the store, one copy made it to California Pacific, who signed a deal with him. The game sold over 30,000 copies, and Garriott received $5 for each copy sold.[12][15][16] Akalabeth is considered the first published Computer Role Playing Game. In the fall, Garriott entered the University of Texas at Austin, joined the school's fencing team and later joined the Society for Creative Anachronism. He created Ultima I while at the university. It was published by California Pacific Computers and sold in Ziploc plastic bags, as was common in those days.
Steve Jackson Games (SJG) maintained a friendly relationship with Garriott and, when he visited the SJG office one day, Garriott was so impressed by the artwork of Denis Loubet that he commissioned him to paint the cover of Ultima I (1980). Loubet subsequently painted many other covers for Garriott's games.[17]
In the early 1980s, Garriott continued to develop the Ultima series of computer games, eventually leaving university to author them on a full-time basis.[12] Originally programmed for the Apple II, the Ultima series later became available on several platforms. Ultima II was published by Sierra On-Line, as they were the only company that would agree to publish it in a box together with a printed cloth map. By the time he developed Ultima III, Garriott, together with his brother Robert, their father Owen and Chuck Bueche established their own video game publisher, Origin Systems, to handle publishing and distribution, in part due to controversy with Sierra over royalties for the PC port of Ultima II.[18][19][7]
Garriott, dressed as his "Lord British" persona, at the 2018 Game Developers Conference
Garriott sold Origin Systems to Electronic Arts in September 1992 for 30 million dollars.[20] In 1997, he coined the term massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG), giving a new identity to the nascent genre previously known as graphical MUDs.[21] In 1999 and 2000, EA canceled all of Origin's new development projects, including Privateer Online, and Harry Potter Online.[22][23] In the midst of these events, Garriott resigned from the company and returned to the industry by forming Destination Games in April 2000 with his brother and Starr Long (the producer of Ultima Online). Once Garriott's non-compete agreement with EA expired a year later, Destination partnered with NCsoft where he acted as a producer and designer of MMORPGs. After that, he became the CEO of NCsoft Austin, also known as NC Interactive.
Tabula Rasa failed to generate a significant amount of money during its initial release, despite its seven-year development period. On November 11, 2008, in an open letter on the Tabula Rasa website, Garriott announced his plans to leave NCsoft to pursue new interests sparked by his spaceflight experiences. Later, however, Garriott claimed that the letter was forged as a means of forcing him out of his position and that he had had no intention of leaving.[24][not in citation given (See discussion.)] Garriott reviewed and signed this announcement, but did not sign a resignation letter that had been drafted for him by NCSoft.[25] On November 24, 2008 NCsoft announced that it planned to end the live service of Tabula Rasa. The servers shut down on February 28, 2009, after a period of free play from January 10 onward for existing account holders.[26]
In July 2010, an Austin District Court awarded Garriott US$28 million in his lawsuit against NCsoft, finding that the company did not appropriately handle his departure in 2008. In October 2011, the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit affirmed the judgment.[27]
Garriott founded the company Portalarium in 2009. The company is developing Shroud of the Avatar: Forsaken Virtues, a spiritual successor to the Ultima series, with Garriott having remarked that had they been able to secure the rights to the Ultima intellectual property from Electronic Arts, the game could have become Ultima Online 2 in name.[28][29][30][31] On March 8, 2013, Portalarium launched a Kickstarter campaign[32] for Shroud of the Avatar: Forsaken Virtues.[33] An early access version of the game was released on Steam on November 24, 2014, and the game was fully released in March 2018.[34][35]
Spaceflight
In 1983 Softline reported that "Garriott wants to go into space but doesn't see it happening in the predictable future ... He has frequently joked with his father about stowing away on a spaceship, and recently his speculations have been sounding uncomfortably realistic".[7] The income from the success of Garriott's video game career allowed him to pursue his interest in spaceflight, and the sale of Origin Systems allowed him to invest in Space Adventures and purchase the ticket to become the first private citizen to fly into space. However, Garriott suffered financial setbacks in 2001 after the dot-com bubble burst, and he was forced to sell his seat to Dennis Tito.[36]
He then says he returned to making games, to make money, and once he had enough, put down a non-refundable deposit to go into space. During the mandatory medical examination, they found he had a hemangioma on his liver, which could cause potentially fatal internal bleeding if there was a rapid depressurization of a spacecraft. Told he had to either give up his large deposit, or undergo life-threatening surgery, he decided to have the operation, and now has a 16-inch scar from it. He spent a year in Russia training before he launched into space.[36]
Richard Garriott (far right) aboard the ISS on 23 October 2008 with the MIT SPHERES Satellites
On September 28, 2007, Space Adventures announced that Garriott would fly to the International Space Station in October 2008 as a self-funded private astronaut, reportedly paying $30 million USD.[3][37] On October 12, 2008, Garriott became the second second-generation space traveler (after Sergei Volkov)[38][39] and the first offspring of an American astronaut to go into space,[3][38][40] and the second person to wear the British Union flag in space.[41] The Soyuz docked with the station on October 14. His father, Owen K. Garriott, was at the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan for the launch of his son and was in attendance when a Soyuz capsule returned with his son twelve days later.[42]
Screen capture from Windows on Earth, used by Garriott on ISS to identify targets for Earth photography. (Coast of Peru)
During his spaceflight, Garriott took part in several education outreach efforts. As a part of that outreach program he worked with the free Metro newspaper in London, which provided him with a special edition containing details of British primary school student's space experiment concepts which Richard took to the ISS. The Metro has claimed as a result that it was the first newspaper in space.[43][44] He is an Amateur Radio Operator (callsign W5KWQ), and during his stay on the International Space Station (ISS), communicated with students and other Amateur Radio operators using Amateur Radio.[45] Garriott also transmitted photographs using the Amateur Radio on the International Space Station (ARISS) slow-scan television system. Garriott also placed a geocache while aboard the ISS.[46]
Garriott also worked with the Windows on Earth project, which provides an interactive, virtual view of Earth as seen from the ISS.[47] Garriott used Windows on Earth software to assist in the selection of locations on Earth to photograph, and the public were able to use the same online tool to track the ISS and see the view Richard was experiencing out an ISS window. Richard's photographs, along with images taken by his astronaut father Owen Garriott in 1973, will be available to the public through Windows on Earth, adding a personal element to studies of Earth and how Earth has changed over time.[47]
Tracy Hickman wrote a screenplay for Garriott, for the first science-fiction film shot in space, Apogee of Fear.[48]
On October 24, Russian cosmonauts of ISS Expedition 17, Sergei Volkov and Oleg Kononenko, along with private astronaut Richard Garriott, aboard Soyuz TMA-12 capsule, landed safely (ideal) at 09:36 (03:36GMT, 07:36 Moscow time), 55 miles north of Arkalyk, Kazakhstan. They were lifted to the Kazakhstan Baikonur space center by helicopter, and then flew to Zvezdny Gorodok (Star City), Moscow Region.[49][50][51][52]
On June 3, 2009, the New York Daily News announced that Garriott would officiate at the first wedding to be held in zero gravity.[53] The wedding took place in a specially modified Boeing 727-200 aircraft, G-Force One, operated by Zero Gravity Corporation, or ZERO-G, a company offering weightless flight experiences, of which he is the co-founder.[54]
In 2010 he released a documentary, Man on a Mission: Richard Garriott's Road to the Stars.[55]
Other accomplishments and interests
In 1986, Garriott helped start the Challenger Center for Space Science Education. His high school science teacher was June Scobee-Rogers, wife of Challenger Shuttle Commander Dick Scobee, who piloted the STS-51-L mission. STS-51-L was intended to carry the first teacher in space flight, before it and its crew were tragically lost on lift off. Scobee drew on Garriott's early leadership in gaming, to help design what has become approximately 50 global interactive networked facilities, where students study about and perform simulated space missions.[56]
Garriott bought the Luna 21 lander and the Lunokhod 2 rover (both currently on lunar surface) from the Lavochkin Association for $68,500 in December 1993 at a Sotheby's auction in New York[57] (although the catalog incorrectly lists lot 68A as Luna 17/Lunokhod 1).[58] Garriott notes that while UN treaties ban governmental ownership of property off earth, corporations and private citizens retain such rights. Lunokhod 2 is still in use with mirrors aligned to bounce lasers such that precise earth moon distances can be measured. With his vehicle "still in use", Garriott claims property rights to the territory surveyed by Lunokhod 2. This may be the first valid claim for private ownership of extraterrestrial territory.[59] Lunokhod 2 held the distance record for miles traveled on another planetary body, until surpassed by the NASA Opportunity Rover in 2014.[60]
Garriott acted as corner man for professional boxer and friend Jesús Chávez in his first title defense against Erik Morales in 2004.[61]
He is also an avid magician and magic collector, and appeared on the cover of the January 2008 issue of MUM, the magazine of the Society of American Magicians.[62] The issue featured an article about an event hosted at Garriott's home involving several of the world's best magicians.[63]
While not directly related to stage magic, Garriot is a fan of the collectible card game Magic: The Gathering, and designed a card in the Magic 2015 expansion set.
Garriott built a haunted house/museum at his residence called Britannia Manor in Austin, Texas.
Garriott promotes private space flight as vice-chairman of the board of directors for Space Adventures.
Garriott is a trustee of the X PRIZE Foundation.[64]
Garriott performed the first Zero-G wedding on June 20, 2009.[65]
Garriott's collections were featured on the June 10, 2012 episode of the Oddities TV series.
In 2007, he co-founded Planetary Power, Inc. with Eric C. Anderson and Miguel Forbes.[66]
Garriott received an Honorary Doctorate of Science from Queen Mary University London in 2011.[67]
Garriott provided vocals for a track on the Shooter Jennings 2016 album Countach.[68]
Garriott is an adviser of SpaceVR, a virtual reality space exploration company.[69]
Garriott is an advocate of Personal rapid transit and the system used at London's Heathrow Airport.[70]
Richard and wife Laetitia Garriott de Cayeux had their first child, Kinga Shuilong Garriott de Cayeux, on June 30, 2012.[71] Their second child, Ronin Phi Garriott de Cayeux, was born on July 28, 2014.
Awards
Garriott was named Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year Award in 1992[72]
Garriott was named one of the "15 Most Influential Players" by Computer Gaming World
Garriott was inducted into the Computer Gaming World Hall of Fame
Garriott was named "Designer of the Year" by PC Gamer
Garriott was named "Game God" by PC Gamer in 1999
Garriott became the ninth inductee into the Academy of Interactive Arts and Sciences' Hall of Fame in 2006[73]
Garriott became the sixth recipient of the Game Developers Choice Lifetime Achievement Award in 2006[74]
Garriott was named an "Industry Legend" at the UK Develop Conference in 2007
Garriott received the British Interplanetary Society's Sir Arthur Clarke Award for Best Individual Achievement in 2009[75]
Garriott received the British Interplanetary Society's Astronaut Pin given to British born astronauts in 2009[75]
Garriott received the Society of NASA Flight Surgeons Lovelace Award for Contributions to Space Medicine in 2009
Garriott was inducted into the Environmental Hall of Fame in 2010.
Richard Allen Garriott de Cayeux (né Garriott; July 4, 1961) is an English-American video-game developer and entrepreneur. He is also known by his alter egos "Lord British" in the game series Ultima and "General British" in Tabula Rasa. Garriott, who is the son of NASA astronaut Owen Garriott, was originally a game designer and programmer, and is now involved in a number of aspects of computer-game development. On October 12, 2008, Richard flew aboard the Soyuz TMA-13 mission to the International Space Station as a private astronaut,[3][4] returning 12 days later aboard Soyuz TMA-12. He became the second astronaut, and first from the U.S., to have a parent who was also a space traveler.
Garriott founded a new video-game-development company in 2009, called Portalarium.[5] His current project is Shroud of the Avatar: Forsaken Virtues where his primary role is as CEO and Creative Director. In 2011, Garriott married Laetitia de Cayeux. Both changed their last names to Garriott de Cayeux.[6]
Contents
1 Early life
2 Game design career
3 Spaceflight
4 Other accomplishments and interests
5 Awards
6 Games
7 References
8 External links
Early life
Richard Allen Garriott was born in Cambridge, England on July 4, 1961,[7][8] to Helen Mary Garriott (née Walker) and Owen Garriott, one of NASA's first scientist-astronauts (selected in NASA Astronaut Group 4), who flew on Skylab 3 and Space Shuttle mission STS-9.[9][10] Richard was raised in Nassau Bay, Texas from the age of about two months.[1][9]
What Garriott later described as "my first real exposure to computers" occurred in 1975, during his freshman year of high school at Clear Creek High School. As he wanted more experience beyond the single one-semester BASIC class the school offered, and as a fan of The Lord of the Rings and Dungeons & Dragons, Garriott convinced the school to let him create a self-directed course in programming, in which he created fantasy computer games on the school's teletype machine.[11][12] Garriott later estimated that he wrote 28 computer fantasy games during high school.[8]
In the summer of 1977, his parents sent him to the University of Oklahoma for a seven-week computer camp. Shortly after he arrived, some of the other boys attending the camp introduced themselves. When Garriott replied to their greeting of "Hi" with "Hello" they decided he sounded like he was from Britain, and gave him the nickname "British". Garriott uses the name to this day for his various gaming characters, including Ultima character Lord British and Tabula Rasa character General British;[13] however, despite his nickname and birthplace, his parents moved to Texas when he was a baby and his accent is American rather than British.[14]
Game design career
Garriott began writing computer games in 1974. His first games were created on and for teletype terminals. The code was stored on paper tape spools and the game was displayed as an ongoing print-out on the spools of printer paper produced by teletype machines. In summer 1979, Garriott worked at a ComputerLand store where he had his first encounter with Apple computers. Inspired by their video monitors with color graphics, he began to add perspective view to his own games. After he created Akalabeth for fun, the owner of the store convinced Garriott it might sell. Garriott spent US$200 printing copies of a manual and cover sheet that his mother had drawn, then he put copies of the game in Ziploc bags to sell at the store. Although Garriott sold fewer than a dozen copies of Akalabeth at the store, one copy made it to California Pacific, who signed a deal with him. The game sold over 30,000 copies, and Garriott received $5 for each copy sold.[12][15][16] Akalabeth is considered the first published Computer Role Playing Game. In the fall, Garriott entered the University of Texas at Austin, joined the school's fencing team and later joined the Society for Creative Anachronism. He created Ultima I while at the university. It was published by California Pacific Computers and sold in Ziploc plastic bags, as was common in those days.
Steve Jackson Games (SJG) maintained a friendly relationship with Garriott and, when he visited the SJG office one day, Garriott was so impressed by the artwork of Denis Loubet that he commissioned him to paint the cover of Ultima I (1980). Loubet subsequently painted many other covers for Garriott's games.[17]
In the early 1980s, Garriott continued to develop the Ultima series of computer games, eventually leaving university to author them on a full-time basis.[12] Originally programmed for the Apple II, the Ultima series later became available on several platforms. Ultima II was published by Sierra On-Line, as they were the only company that would agree to publish it in a box together with a printed cloth map. By the time he developed Ultima III, Garriott, together with his brother Robert, their father Owen and Chuck Bueche established their own video game publisher, Origin Systems, to handle publishing and distribution, in part due to controversy with Sierra over royalties for the PC port of Ultima II.[18][19][7]
Garriott, dressed as his "Lord British" persona, at the 2018 Game Developers Conference
Garriott sold Origin Systems to Electronic Arts in September 1992 for 30 million dollars.[20] In 1997, he coined the term massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG), giving a new identity to the nascent genre previously known as graphical MUDs.[21] In 1999 and 2000, EA canceled all of Origin's new development projects, including Privateer Online, and Harry Potter Online.[22][23] In the midst of these events, Garriott resigned from the company and returned to the industry by forming Destination Games in April 2000 with his brother and Starr Long (the producer of Ultima Online). Once Garriott's non-compete agreement with EA expired a year later, Destination partnered with NCsoft where he acted as a producer and designer of MMORPGs. After that, he became the CEO of NCsoft Austin, also known as NC Interactive.
Tabula Rasa failed to generate a significant amount of money during its initial release, despite its seven-year development period. On November 11, 2008, in an open letter on the Tabula Rasa website, Garriott announced his plans to leave NCsoft to pursue new interests sparked by his spaceflight experiences. Later, however, Garriott claimed that the letter was forged as a means of forcing him out of his position and that he had had no intention of leaving.[24][not in citation given (See discussion.)] Garriott reviewed and signed this announcement, but did not sign a resignation letter that had been drafted for him by NCSoft.[25] On November 24, 2008 NCsoft announced that it planned to end the live service of Tabula Rasa. The servers shut down on February 28, 2009, after a period of free play from January 10 onward for existing account holders.[26]
In July 2010, an Austin District Court awarded Garriott US$28 million in his lawsuit against NCsoft, finding that the company did not appropriately handle his departure in 2008. In October 2011, the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit affirmed the judgment.[27]
Garriott founded the company Portalarium in 2009. The company is developing Shroud of the Avatar: Forsaken Virtues, a spiritual successor to the Ultima series, with Garriott having remarked that had they been able to secure the rights to the Ultima intellectual property from Electronic Arts, the game could have become Ultima Online 2 in name.[28][29][30][31] On March 8, 2013, Portalarium launched a Kickstarter campaign[32] for Shroud of the Avatar: Forsaken Virtues.[33] An early access version of the game was released on Steam on November 24, 2014, and the game was fully released in March 2018.[34][35]
Spaceflight
In 1983 Softline reported that "Garriott wants to go into space but doesn't see it happening in the predictable future ... He has frequently joked with his father about stowing away on a spaceship, and recently his speculations have been sounding uncomfortably realistic".[7] The income from the success of Garriott's video game career allowed him to pursue his interest in spaceflight, and the sale of Origin Systems allowed him to invest in Space Adventures and purchase the ticket to become the first private citizen to fly into space. However, Garriott suffered financial setbacks in 2001 after the dot-com bubble burst, and he was forced to sell his seat to Dennis Tito.[36]
He then says he returned to making games, to make money, and once he had enough, put down a non-refundable deposit to go into space. During the mandatory medical examination, they found he had a hemangioma on his liver, which could cause potentially fatal internal bleeding if there was a rapid depressurization of a spacecraft. Told he had to either give up his large deposit, or undergo life-threatening surgery, he decided to have the operation, and now has a 16-inch scar from it. He spent a year in Russia training before he launched into space.[36]
Richard Garriott (far right) aboard the ISS on 23 October 2008 with the MIT SPHERES Satellites
On September 28, 2007, Space Adventures announced that Garriott would fly to the International Space Station in October 2008 as a self-funded private astronaut, reportedly paying $30 million USD.[3][37] On October 12, 2008, Garriott became the second second-generation space traveler (after Sergei Volkov)[38][39] and the first offspring of an American astronaut to go into space,[3][38][40] and the second person to wear the British Union flag in space.[41] The Soyuz docked with the station on October 14. His father, Owen K. Garriott, was at the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan for the launch of his son and was in attendance when a Soyuz capsule returned with his son twelve days later.[42]
Screen capture from Windows on Earth, used by Garriott on ISS to identify targets for Earth photography. (Coast of Peru)
During his spaceflight, Garriott took part in several education outreach efforts. As a part of that outreach program he worked with the free Metro newspaper in London, which provided him with a special edition containing details of British primary school student's space experiment concepts which Richard took to the ISS. The Metro has claimed as a result that it was the first newspaper in space.[43][44] He is an Amateur Radio Operator (callsign W5KWQ), and during his stay on the International Space Station (ISS), communicated with students and other Amateur Radio operators using Amateur Radio.[45] Garriott also transmitted photographs using the Amateur Radio on the International Space Station (ARISS) slow-scan television system. Garriott also placed a geocache while aboard the ISS.[46]
Garriott also worked with the Windows on Earth project, which provides an interactive, virtual view of Earth as seen from the ISS.[47] Garriott used Windows on Earth software to assist in the selection of locations on Earth to photograph, and the public were able to use the same online tool to track the ISS and see the view Richard was experiencing out an ISS window. Richard's photographs, along with images taken by his astronaut father Owen Garriott in 1973, will be available to the public through Windows on Earth, adding a personal element to studies of Earth and how Earth has changed over time.[47]
Tracy Hickman wrote a screenplay for Garriott, for the first science-fiction film shot in space, Apogee of Fear.[48]
On October 24, Russian cosmonauts of ISS Expedition 17, Sergei Volkov and Oleg Kononenko, along with private astronaut Richard Garriott, aboard Soyuz TMA-12 capsule, landed safely (ideal) at 09:36 (03:36GMT, 07:36 Moscow time), 55 miles north of Arkalyk, Kazakhstan. They were lifted to the Kazakhstan Baikonur space center by helicopter, and then flew to Zvezdny Gorodok (Star City), Moscow Region.[49][50][51][52]
On June 3, 2009, the New York Daily News announced that Garriott would officiate at the first wedding to be held in zero gravity.[53] The wedding took place in a specially modified Boeing 727-200 aircraft, G-Force One, operated by Zero Gravity Corporation, or ZERO-G, a company offering weightless flight experiences, of which he is the co-founder.[54]
In 2010 he released a documentary, Man on a Mission: Richard Garriott's Road to the Stars.[55]
Other accomplishments and interests
In 1986, Garriott helped start the Challenger Center for Space Science Education. His high school science teacher was June Scobee-Rogers, wife of Challenger Shuttle Commander Dick Scobee, who piloted the STS-51-L mission. STS-51-L was intended to carry the first teacher in space flight, before it and its crew were tragically lost on lift off. Scobee drew on Garriott's early leadership in gaming, to help design what has become approximately 50 global interactive networked facilities, where students study about and perform simulated space missions.[56]
Garriott bought the Luna 21 lander and the Lunokhod 2 rover (both currently on lunar surface) from the Lavochkin Association for $68,500 in December 1993 at a Sotheby's auction in New York[57] (although the catalog incorrectly lists lot 68A as Luna 17/Lunokhod 1).[58] Garriott notes that while UN treaties ban governmental ownership of property off earth, corporations and private citizens retain such rights. Lunokhod 2 is still in use with mirrors aligned to bounce lasers such that precise earth moon distances can be measured. With his vehicle "still in use", Garriott claims property rights to the territory surveyed by Lunokhod 2. This may be the first valid claim for private ownership of extraterrestrial territory.[59] Lunokhod 2 held the distance record for miles traveled on another planetary body, until surpassed by the NASA Opportunity Rover in 2014.[60]
Garriott acted as corner man for professional boxer and friend Jesús Chávez in his first title defense against Erik Morales in 2004.[61]
He is also an avid magician and magic collector, and appeared on the cover of the January 2008 issue of MUM, the magazine of the Society of American Magicians.[62] The issue featured an article about an event hosted at Garriott's home involving several of the world's best magicians.[63]
While not directly related to stage magic, Garriot is a fan of the collectible card game Magic: The Gathering, and designed a card in the Magic 2015 expansion set.
Garriott built a haunted house/museum at his residence called Britannia Manor in Austin, Texas.
Garriott promotes private space flight as vice-chairman of the board of directors for Space Adventures.
Garriott is a trustee of the X PRIZE Foundation.[64]
Garriott performed the first Zero-G wedding on June 20, 2009.[65]
Garriott's collections were featured on the June 10, 2012 episode of the Oddities TV series.
In 2007, he co-founded Planetary Power, Inc. with Eric C. Anderson and Miguel Forbes.[66]
Garriott received an Honorary Doctorate of Science from Queen Mary University London in 2011.[67]
Garriott provided vocals for a track on the Shooter Jennings 2016 album Countach.[68]
Garriott is an adviser of SpaceVR, a virtual reality space exploration company.[69]
Garriott is an advocate of Personal rapid transit and the system used at London's Heathrow Airport.[70]
Richard and wife Laetitia Garriott de Cayeux had their first child, Kinga Shuilong Garriott de Cayeux, on June 30, 2012.[71] Their second child, Ronin Phi Garriott de Cayeux, was born on July 28, 2014.
Awards
Garriott was named Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year Award in 1992[72]
Garriott was named one of the "15 Most Influential Players" by Computer Gaming World
Garriott was inducted into the Computer Gaming World Hall of Fame
Garriott was named "Designer of the Year" by PC Gamer
Garriott was named "Game God" by PC Gamer in 1999
Garriott became the ninth inductee into the Academy of Interactive Arts and Sciences' Hall of Fame in 2006[73]
Garriott became the sixth recipient of the Game Developers Choice Lifetime Achievement Award in 2006[74]
Garriott was named an "Industry Legend" at the UK Develop Conference in 2007
Garriott received the British Interplanetary Society's Sir Arthur Clarke Award for Best Individual Achievement in 2009[75]
Garriott received the British Interplanetary Society's Astronaut Pin given to British born astronauts in 2009[75]
Garriott received the Society of NASA Flight Surgeons Lovelace Award for Contributions to Space Medicine in 2009
Garriott was inducted into the Environmental Hall of Fame in 2010.
A Hewlett Packard 16C programmers calculator. Part of the Voyager series and made specifically for programmers (the only HP made specifically for this purpose).
This is a 'new old stock' model, made in 1985.
Richard Allen Garriott de Cayeux (né Garriott; July 4, 1961) is an English-American video-game developer and entrepreneur. He is also known by his alter egos "Lord British" in the game series Ultima and "General British" in Tabula Rasa. Garriott, who is the son of NASA astronaut Owen Garriott, was originally a game designer and programmer, and is now involved in a number of aspects of computer-game development. On October 12, 2008, Richard flew aboard the Soyuz TMA-13 mission to the International Space Station as a private astronaut,[3][4] returning 12 days later aboard Soyuz TMA-12. He became the second astronaut, and first from the U.S., to have a parent who was also a space traveler.
Garriott founded a new video-game-development company in 2009, called Portalarium.[5] His current project is Shroud of the Avatar: Forsaken Virtues where his primary role is as CEO and Creative Director. In 2011, Garriott married Laetitia de Cayeux. Both changed their last names to Garriott de Cayeux.[6]
Contents
1 Early life
2 Game design career
3 Spaceflight
4 Other accomplishments and interests
5 Awards
6 Games
7 References
8 External links
Early life
Richard Allen Garriott was born in Cambridge, England on July 4, 1961,[7][8] to Helen Mary Garriott (née Walker) and Owen Garriott, one of NASA's first scientist-astronauts (selected in NASA Astronaut Group 4), who flew on Skylab 3 and Space Shuttle mission STS-9.[9][10] Richard was raised in Nassau Bay, Texas from the age of about two months.[1][9]
What Garriott later described as "my first real exposure to computers" occurred in 1975, during his freshman year of high school at Clear Creek High School. As he wanted more experience beyond the single one-semester BASIC class the school offered, and as a fan of The Lord of the Rings and Dungeons & Dragons, Garriott convinced the school to let him create a self-directed course in programming, in which he created fantasy computer games on the school's teletype machine.[11][12] Garriott later estimated that he wrote 28 computer fantasy games during high school.[8]
In the summer of 1977, his parents sent him to the University of Oklahoma for a seven-week computer camp. Shortly after he arrived, some of the other boys attending the camp introduced themselves. When Garriott replied to their greeting of "Hi" with "Hello" they decided he sounded like he was from Britain, and gave him the nickname "British". Garriott uses the name to this day for his various gaming characters, including Ultima character Lord British and Tabula Rasa character General British;[13] however, despite his nickname and birthplace, his parents moved to Texas when he was a baby and his accent is American rather than British.[14]
Game design career
Garriott began writing computer games in 1974. His first games were created on and for teletype terminals. The code was stored on paper tape spools and the game was displayed as an ongoing print-out on the spools of printer paper produced by teletype machines. In summer 1979, Garriott worked at a ComputerLand store where he had his first encounter with Apple computers. Inspired by their video monitors with color graphics, he began to add perspective view to his own games. After he created Akalabeth for fun, the owner of the store convinced Garriott it might sell. Garriott spent US$200 printing copies of a manual and cover sheet that his mother had drawn, then he put copies of the game in Ziploc bags to sell at the store. Although Garriott sold fewer than a dozen copies of Akalabeth at the store, one copy made it to California Pacific, who signed a deal with him. The game sold over 30,000 copies, and Garriott received $5 for each copy sold.[12][15][16] Akalabeth is considered the first published Computer Role Playing Game. In the fall, Garriott entered the University of Texas at Austin, joined the school's fencing team and later joined the Society for Creative Anachronism. He created Ultima I while at the university. It was published by California Pacific Computers and sold in Ziploc plastic bags, as was common in those days.
Steve Jackson Games (SJG) maintained a friendly relationship with Garriott and, when he visited the SJG office one day, Garriott was so impressed by the artwork of Denis Loubet that he commissioned him to paint the cover of Ultima I (1980). Loubet subsequently painted many other covers for Garriott's games.[17]
In the early 1980s, Garriott continued to develop the Ultima series of computer games, eventually leaving university to author them on a full-time basis.[12] Originally programmed for the Apple II, the Ultima series later became available on several platforms. Ultima II was published by Sierra On-Line, as they were the only company that would agree to publish it in a box together with a printed cloth map. By the time he developed Ultima III, Garriott, together with his brother Robert, their father Owen and Chuck Bueche established their own video game publisher, Origin Systems, to handle publishing and distribution, in part due to controversy with Sierra over royalties for the PC port of Ultima II.[18][19][7]
Garriott, dressed as his "Lord British" persona, at the 2018 Game Developers Conference
Garriott sold Origin Systems to Electronic Arts in September 1992 for 30 million dollars.[20] In 1997, he coined the term massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG), giving a new identity to the nascent genre previously known as graphical MUDs.[21] In 1999 and 2000, EA canceled all of Origin's new development projects, including Privateer Online, and Harry Potter Online.[22][23] In the midst of these events, Garriott resigned from the company and returned to the industry by forming Destination Games in April 2000 with his brother and Starr Long (the producer of Ultima Online). Once Garriott's non-compete agreement with EA expired a year later, Destination partnered with NCsoft where he acted as a producer and designer of MMORPGs. After that, he became the CEO of NCsoft Austin, also known as NC Interactive.
Tabula Rasa failed to generate a significant amount of money during its initial release, despite its seven-year development period. On November 11, 2008, in an open letter on the Tabula Rasa website, Garriott announced his plans to leave NCsoft to pursue new interests sparked by his spaceflight experiences. Later, however, Garriott claimed that the letter was forged as a means of forcing him out of his position and that he had had no intention of leaving.[24][not in citation given (See discussion.)] Garriott reviewed and signed this announcement, but did not sign a resignation letter that had been drafted for him by NCSoft.[25] On November 24, 2008 NCsoft announced that it planned to end the live service of Tabula Rasa. The servers shut down on February 28, 2009, after a period of free play from January 10 onward for existing account holders.[26]
In July 2010, an Austin District Court awarded Garriott US$28 million in his lawsuit against NCsoft, finding that the company did not appropriately handle his departure in 2008. In October 2011, the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit affirmed the judgment.[27]
Garriott founded the company Portalarium in 2009. The company is developing Shroud of the Avatar: Forsaken Virtues, a spiritual successor to the Ultima series, with Garriott having remarked that had they been able to secure the rights to the Ultima intellectual property from Electronic Arts, the game could have become Ultima Online 2 in name.[28][29][30][31] On March 8, 2013, Portalarium launched a Kickstarter campaign[32] for Shroud of the Avatar: Forsaken Virtues.[33] An early access version of the game was released on Steam on November 24, 2014, and the game was fully released in March 2018.[34][35]
Spaceflight
In 1983 Softline reported that "Garriott wants to go into space but doesn't see it happening in the predictable future ... He has frequently joked with his father about stowing away on a spaceship, and recently his speculations have been sounding uncomfortably realistic".[7] The income from the success of Garriott's video game career allowed him to pursue his interest in spaceflight, and the sale of Origin Systems allowed him to invest in Space Adventures and purchase the ticket to become the first private citizen to fly into space. However, Garriott suffered financial setbacks in 2001 after the dot-com bubble burst, and he was forced to sell his seat to Dennis Tito.[36]
He then says he returned to making games, to make money, and once he had enough, put down a non-refundable deposit to go into space. During the mandatory medical examination, they found he had a hemangioma on his liver, which could cause potentially fatal internal bleeding if there was a rapid depressurization of a spacecraft. Told he had to either give up his large deposit, or undergo life-threatening surgery, he decided to have the operation, and now has a 16-inch scar from it. He spent a year in Russia training before he launched into space.[36]
Richard Garriott (far right) aboard the ISS on 23 October 2008 with the MIT SPHERES Satellites
On September 28, 2007, Space Adventures announced that Garriott would fly to the International Space Station in October 2008 as a self-funded private astronaut, reportedly paying $30 million USD.[3][37] On October 12, 2008, Garriott became the second second-generation space traveler (after Sergei Volkov)[38][39] and the first offspring of an American astronaut to go into space,[3][38][40] and the second person to wear the British Union flag in space.[41] The Soyuz docked with the station on October 14. His father, Owen K. Garriott, was at the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan for the launch of his son and was in attendance when a Soyuz capsule returned with his son twelve days later.[42]
Screen capture from Windows on Earth, used by Garriott on ISS to identify targets for Earth photography. (Coast of Peru)
During his spaceflight, Garriott took part in several education outreach efforts. As a part of that outreach program he worked with the free Metro newspaper in London, which provided him with a special edition containing details of British primary school student's space experiment concepts which Richard took to the ISS. The Metro has claimed as a result that it was the first newspaper in space.[43][44] He is an Amateur Radio Operator (callsign W5KWQ), and during his stay on the International Space Station (ISS), communicated with students and other Amateur Radio operators using Amateur Radio.[45] Garriott also transmitted photographs using the Amateur Radio on the International Space Station (ARISS) slow-scan television system. Garriott also placed a geocache while aboard the ISS.[46]
Garriott also worked with the Windows on Earth project, which provides an interactive, virtual view of Earth as seen from the ISS.[47] Garriott used Windows on Earth software to assist in the selection of locations on Earth to photograph, and the public were able to use the same online tool to track the ISS and see the view Richard was experiencing out an ISS window. Richard's photographs, along with images taken by his astronaut father Owen Garriott in 1973, will be available to the public through Windows on Earth, adding a personal element to studies of Earth and how Earth has changed over time.[47]
Tracy Hickman wrote a screenplay for Garriott, for the first science-fiction film shot in space, Apogee of Fear.[48]
On October 24, Russian cosmonauts of ISS Expedition 17, Sergei Volkov and Oleg Kononenko, along with private astronaut Richard Garriott, aboard Soyuz TMA-12 capsule, landed safely (ideal) at 09:36 (03:36GMT, 07:36 Moscow time), 55 miles north of Arkalyk, Kazakhstan. They were lifted to the Kazakhstan Baikonur space center by helicopter, and then flew to Zvezdny Gorodok (Star City), Moscow Region.[49][50][51][52]
On June 3, 2009, the New York Daily News announced that Garriott would officiate at the first wedding to be held in zero gravity.[53] The wedding took place in a specially modified Boeing 727-200 aircraft, G-Force One, operated by Zero Gravity Corporation, or ZERO-G, a company offering weightless flight experiences, of which he is the co-founder.[54]
In 2010 he released a documentary, Man on a Mission: Richard Garriott's Road to the Stars.[55]
Other accomplishments and interests
In 1986, Garriott helped start the Challenger Center for Space Science Education. His high school science teacher was June Scobee-Rogers, wife of Challenger Shuttle Commander Dick Scobee, who piloted the STS-51-L mission. STS-51-L was intended to carry the first teacher in space flight, before it and its crew were tragically lost on lift off. Scobee drew on Garriott's early leadership in gaming, to help design what has become approximately 50 global interactive networked facilities, where students study about and perform simulated space missions.[56]
Garriott bought the Luna 21 lander and the Lunokhod 2 rover (both currently on lunar surface) from the Lavochkin Association for $68,500 in December 1993 at a Sotheby's auction in New York[57] (although the catalog incorrectly lists lot 68A as Luna 17/Lunokhod 1).[58] Garriott notes that while UN treaties ban governmental ownership of property off earth, corporations and private citizens retain such rights. Lunokhod 2 is still in use with mirrors aligned to bounce lasers such that precise earth moon distances can be measured. With his vehicle "still in use", Garriott claims property rights to the territory surveyed by Lunokhod 2. This may be the first valid claim for private ownership of extraterrestrial territory.[59] Lunokhod 2 held the distance record for miles traveled on another planetary body, until surpassed by the NASA Opportunity Rover in 2014.[60]
Garriott acted as corner man for professional boxer and friend Jesús Chávez in his first title defense against Erik Morales in 2004.[61]
He is also an avid magician and magic collector, and appeared on the cover of the January 2008 issue of MUM, the magazine of the Society of American Magicians.[62] The issue featured an article about an event hosted at Garriott's home involving several of the world's best magicians.[63]
While not directly related to stage magic, Garriot is a fan of the collectible card game Magic: The Gathering, and designed a card in the Magic 2015 expansion set.
Garriott built a haunted house/museum at his residence called Britannia Manor in Austin, Texas.
Garriott promotes private space flight as vice-chairman of the board of directors for Space Adventures.
Garriott is a trustee of the X PRIZE Foundation.[64]
Garriott performed the first Zero-G wedding on June 20, 2009.[65]
Garriott's collections were featured on the June 10, 2012 episode of the Oddities TV series.
In 2007, he co-founded Planetary Power, Inc. with Eric C. Anderson and Miguel Forbes.[66]
Garriott received an Honorary Doctorate of Science from Queen Mary University London in 2011.[67]
Garriott provided vocals for a track on the Shooter Jennings 2016 album Countach.[68]
Garriott is an adviser of SpaceVR, a virtual reality space exploration company.[69]
Garriott is an advocate of Personal rapid transit and the system used at London's Heathrow Airport.[70]
Richard and wife Laetitia Garriott de Cayeux had their first child, Kinga Shuilong Garriott de Cayeux, on June 30, 2012.[71] Their second child, Ronin Phi Garriott de Cayeux, was born on July 28, 2014.
Awards
Garriott was named Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year Award in 1992[72]
Garriott was named one of the "15 Most Influential Players" by Computer Gaming World
Garriott was inducted into the Computer Gaming World Hall of Fame
Garriott was named "Designer of the Year" by PC Gamer
Garriott was named "Game God" by PC Gamer in 1999
Garriott became the ninth inductee into the Academy of Interactive Arts and Sciences' Hall of Fame in 2006[73]
Garriott became the sixth recipient of the Game Developers Choice Lifetime Achievement Award in 2006[74]
Garriott was named an "Industry Legend" at the UK Develop Conference in 2007
Garriott received the British Interplanetary Society's Sir Arthur Clarke Award for Best Individual Achievement in 2009[75]
Garriott received the British Interplanetary Society's Astronaut Pin given to British born astronauts in 2009[75]
Garriott received the Society of NASA Flight Surgeons Lovelace Award for Contributions to Space Medicine in 2009
Garriott was inducted into the Environmental Hall of Fame in 2010.
Richard Allen Garriott de Cayeux (né Garriott; July 4, 1961) is an English-American video-game developer and entrepreneur. He is also known by his alter egos "Lord British" in the game series Ultima and "General British" in Tabula Rasa. Garriott, who is the son of NASA astronaut Owen Garriott, was originally a game designer and programmer, and is now involved in a number of aspects of computer-game development. On October 12, 2008, Richard flew aboard the Soyuz TMA-13 mission to the International Space Station as a private astronaut,[3][4] returning 12 days later aboard Soyuz TMA-12. He became the second astronaut, and first from the U.S., to have a parent who was also a space traveler.
Garriott founded a new video-game-development company in 2009, called Portalarium.[5] His current project is Shroud of the Avatar: Forsaken Virtues where his primary role is as CEO and Creative Director. In 2011, Garriott married Laetitia de Cayeux. Both changed their last names to Garriott de Cayeux.[6]
Contents
1 Early life
2 Game design career
3 Spaceflight
4 Other accomplishments and interests
5 Awards
6 Games
7 References
8 External links
Early life
Richard Allen Garriott was born in Cambridge, England on July 4, 1961,[7][8] to Helen Mary Garriott (née Walker) and Owen Garriott, one of NASA's first scientist-astronauts (selected in NASA Astronaut Group 4), who flew on Skylab 3 and Space Shuttle mission STS-9.[9][10] Richard was raised in Nassau Bay, Texas from the age of about two months.[1][9]
What Garriott later described as "my first real exposure to computers" occurred in 1975, during his freshman year of high school at Clear Creek High School. As he wanted more experience beyond the single one-semester BASIC class the school offered, and as a fan of The Lord of the Rings and Dungeons & Dragons, Garriott convinced the school to let him create a self-directed course in programming, in which he created fantasy computer games on the school's teletype machine.[11][12] Garriott later estimated that he wrote 28 computer fantasy games during high school.[8]
In the summer of 1977, his parents sent him to the University of Oklahoma for a seven-week computer camp. Shortly after he arrived, some of the other boys attending the camp introduced themselves. When Garriott replied to their greeting of "Hi" with "Hello" they decided he sounded like he was from Britain, and gave him the nickname "British". Garriott uses the name to this day for his various gaming characters, including Ultima character Lord British and Tabula Rasa character General British;[13] however, despite his nickname and birthplace, his parents moved to Texas when he was a baby and his accent is American rather than British.[14]
Game design career
Garriott began writing computer games in 1974. His first games were created on and for teletype terminals. The code was stored on paper tape spools and the game was displayed as an ongoing print-out on the spools of printer paper produced by teletype machines. In summer 1979, Garriott worked at a ComputerLand store where he had his first encounter with Apple computers. Inspired by their video monitors with color graphics, he began to add perspective view to his own games. After he created Akalabeth for fun, the owner of the store convinced Garriott it might sell. Garriott spent US$200 printing copies of a manual and cover sheet that his mother had drawn, then he put copies of the game in Ziploc bags to sell at the store. Although Garriott sold fewer than a dozen copies of Akalabeth at the store, one copy made it to California Pacific, who signed a deal with him. The game sold over 30,000 copies, and Garriott received $5 for each copy sold.[12][15][16] Akalabeth is considered the first published Computer Role Playing Game. In the fall, Garriott entered the University of Texas at Austin, joined the school's fencing team and later joined the Society for Creative Anachronism. He created Ultima I while at the university. It was published by California Pacific Computers and sold in Ziploc plastic bags, as was common in those days.
Steve Jackson Games (SJG) maintained a friendly relationship with Garriott and, when he visited the SJG office one day, Garriott was so impressed by the artwork of Denis Loubet that he commissioned him to paint the cover of Ultima I (1980). Loubet subsequently painted many other covers for Garriott's games.[17]
In the early 1980s, Garriott continued to develop the Ultima series of computer games, eventually leaving university to author them on a full-time basis.[12] Originally programmed for the Apple II, the Ultima series later became available on several platforms. Ultima II was published by Sierra On-Line, as they were the only company that would agree to publish it in a box together with a printed cloth map. By the time he developed Ultima III, Garriott, together with his brother Robert, their father Owen and Chuck Bueche established their own video game publisher, Origin Systems, to handle publishing and distribution, in part due to controversy with Sierra over royalties for the PC port of Ultima II.[18][19][7]
Garriott, dressed as his "Lord British" persona, at the 2018 Game Developers Conference
Garriott sold Origin Systems to Electronic Arts in September 1992 for 30 million dollars.[20] In 1997, he coined the term massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG), giving a new identity to the nascent genre previously known as graphical MUDs.[21] In 1999 and 2000, EA canceled all of Origin's new development projects, including Privateer Online, and Harry Potter Online.[22][23] In the midst of these events, Garriott resigned from the company and returned to the industry by forming Destination Games in April 2000 with his brother and Starr Long (the producer of Ultima Online). Once Garriott's non-compete agreement with EA expired a year later, Destination partnered with NCsoft where he acted as a producer and designer of MMORPGs. After that, he became the CEO of NCsoft Austin, also known as NC Interactive.
Tabula Rasa failed to generate a significant amount of money during its initial release, despite its seven-year development period. On November 11, 2008, in an open letter on the Tabula Rasa website, Garriott announced his plans to leave NCsoft to pursue new interests sparked by his spaceflight experiences. Later, however, Garriott claimed that the letter was forged as a means of forcing him out of his position and that he had had no intention of leaving.[24][not in citation given (See discussion.)] Garriott reviewed and signed this announcement, but did not sign a resignation letter that had been drafted for him by NCSoft.[25] On November 24, 2008 NCsoft announced that it planned to end the live service of Tabula Rasa. The servers shut down on February 28, 2009, after a period of free play from January 10 onward for existing account holders.[26]
In July 2010, an Austin District Court awarded Garriott US$28 million in his lawsuit against NCsoft, finding that the company did not appropriately handle his departure in 2008. In October 2011, the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit affirmed the judgment.[27]
Garriott founded the company Portalarium in 2009. The company is developing Shroud of the Avatar: Forsaken Virtues, a spiritual successor to the Ultima series, with Garriott having remarked that had they been able to secure the rights to the Ultima intellectual property from Electronic Arts, the game could have become Ultima Online 2 in name.[28][29][30][31] On March 8, 2013, Portalarium launched a Kickstarter campaign[32] for Shroud of the Avatar: Forsaken Virtues.[33] An early access version of the game was released on Steam on November 24, 2014, and the game was fully released in March 2018.[34][35]
Spaceflight
In 1983 Softline reported that "Garriott wants to go into space but doesn't see it happening in the predictable future ... He has frequently joked with his father about stowing away on a spaceship, and recently his speculations have been sounding uncomfortably realistic".[7] The income from the success of Garriott's video game career allowed him to pursue his interest in spaceflight, and the sale of Origin Systems allowed him to invest in Space Adventures and purchase the ticket to become the first private citizen to fly into space. However, Garriott suffered financial setbacks in 2001 after the dot-com bubble burst, and he was forced to sell his seat to Dennis Tito.[36]
He then says he returned to making games, to make money, and once he had enough, put down a non-refundable deposit to go into space. During the mandatory medical examination, they found he had a hemangioma on his liver, which could cause potentially fatal internal bleeding if there was a rapid depressurization of a spacecraft. Told he had to either give up his large deposit, or undergo life-threatening surgery, he decided to have the operation, and now has a 16-inch scar from it. He spent a year in Russia training before he launched into space.[36]
Richard Garriott (far right) aboard the ISS on 23 October 2008 with the MIT SPHERES Satellites
On September 28, 2007, Space Adventures announced that Garriott would fly to the International Space Station in October 2008 as a self-funded private astronaut, reportedly paying $30 million USD.[3][37] On October 12, 2008, Garriott became the second second-generation space traveler (after Sergei Volkov)[38][39] and the first offspring of an American astronaut to go into space,[3][38][40] and the second person to wear the British Union flag in space.[41] The Soyuz docked with the station on October 14. His father, Owen K. Garriott, was at the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan for the launch of his son and was in attendance when a Soyuz capsule returned with his son twelve days later.[42]
Screen capture from Windows on Earth, used by Garriott on ISS to identify targets for Earth photography. (Coast of Peru)
During his spaceflight, Garriott took part in several education outreach efforts. As a part of that outreach program he worked with the free Metro newspaper in London, which provided him with a special edition containing details of British primary school student's space experiment concepts which Richard took to the ISS. The Metro has claimed as a result that it was the first newspaper in space.[43][44] He is an Amateur Radio Operator (callsign W5KWQ), and during his stay on the International Space Station (ISS), communicated with students and other Amateur Radio operators using Amateur Radio.[45] Garriott also transmitted photographs using the Amateur Radio on the International Space Station (ARISS) slow-scan television system. Garriott also placed a geocache while aboard the ISS.[46]
Garriott also worked with the Windows on Earth project, which provides an interactive, virtual view of Earth as seen from the ISS.[47] Garriott used Windows on Earth software to assist in the selection of locations on Earth to photograph, and the public were able to use the same online tool to track the ISS and see the view Richard was experiencing out an ISS window. Richard's photographs, along with images taken by his astronaut father Owen Garriott in 1973, will be available to the public through Windows on Earth, adding a personal element to studies of Earth and how Earth has changed over time.[47]
Tracy Hickman wrote a screenplay for Garriott, for the first science-fiction film shot in space, Apogee of Fear.[48]
On October 24, Russian cosmonauts of ISS Expedition 17, Sergei Volkov and Oleg Kononenko, along with private astronaut Richard Garriott, aboard Soyuz TMA-12 capsule, landed safely (ideal) at 09:36 (03:36GMT, 07:36 Moscow time), 55 miles north of Arkalyk, Kazakhstan. They were lifted to the Kazakhstan Baikonur space center by helicopter, and then flew to Zvezdny Gorodok (Star City), Moscow Region.[49][50][51][52]
On June 3, 2009, the New York Daily News announced that Garriott would officiate at the first wedding to be held in zero gravity.[53] The wedding took place in a specially modified Boeing 727-200 aircraft, G-Force One, operated by Zero Gravity Corporation, or ZERO-G, a company offering weightless flight experiences, of which he is the co-founder.[54]
In 2010 he released a documentary, Man on a Mission: Richard Garriott's Road to the Stars.[55]
Other accomplishments and interests
In 1986, Garriott helped start the Challenger Center for Space Science Education. His high school science teacher was June Scobee-Rogers, wife of Challenger Shuttle Commander Dick Scobee, who piloted the STS-51-L mission. STS-51-L was intended to carry the first teacher in space flight, before it and its crew were tragically lost on lift off. Scobee drew on Garriott's early leadership in gaming, to help design what has become approximately 50 global interactive networked facilities, where students study about and perform simulated space missions.[56]
Garriott bought the Luna 21 lander and the Lunokhod 2 rover (both currently on lunar surface) from the Lavochkin Association for $68,500 in December 1993 at a Sotheby's auction in New York[57] (although the catalog incorrectly lists lot 68A as Luna 17/Lunokhod 1).[58] Garriott notes that while UN treaties ban governmental ownership of property off earth, corporations and private citizens retain such rights. Lunokhod 2 is still in use with mirrors aligned to bounce lasers such that precise earth moon distances can be measured. With his vehicle "still in use", Garriott claims property rights to the territory surveyed by Lunokhod 2. This may be the first valid claim for private ownership of extraterrestrial territory.[59] Lunokhod 2 held the distance record for miles traveled on another planetary body, until surpassed by the NASA Opportunity Rover in 2014.[60]
Garriott acted as corner man for professional boxer and friend Jesús Chávez in his first title defense against Erik Morales in 2004.[61]
He is also an avid magician and magic collector, and appeared on the cover of the January 2008 issue of MUM, the magazine of the Society of American Magicians.[62] The issue featured an article about an event hosted at Garriott's home involving several of the world's best magicians.[63]
While not directly related to stage magic, Garriot is a fan of the collectible card game Magic: The Gathering, and designed a card in the Magic 2015 expansion set.
Garriott built a haunted house/museum at his residence called Britannia Manor in Austin, Texas.
Garriott promotes private space flight as vice-chairman of the board of directors for Space Adventures.
Garriott is a trustee of the X PRIZE Foundation.[64]
Garriott performed the first Zero-G wedding on June 20, 2009.[65]
Garriott's collections were featured on the June 10, 2012 episode of the Oddities TV series.
In 2007, he co-founded Planetary Power, Inc. with Eric C. Anderson and Miguel Forbes.[66]
Garriott received an Honorary Doctorate of Science from Queen Mary University London in 2011.[67]
Garriott provided vocals for a track on the Shooter Jennings 2016 album Countach.[68]
Garriott is an adviser of SpaceVR, a virtual reality space exploration company.[69]
Garriott is an advocate of Personal rapid transit and the system used at London's Heathrow Airport.[70]
Richard and wife Laetitia Garriott de Cayeux had their first child, Kinga Shuilong Garriott de Cayeux, on June 30, 2012.[71] Their second child, Ronin Phi Garriott de Cayeux, was born on July 28, 2014.
Awards
Garriott was named Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year Award in 1992[72]
Garriott was named one of the "15 Most Influential Players" by Computer Gaming World
Garriott was inducted into the Computer Gaming World Hall of Fame
Garriott was named "Designer of the Year" by PC Gamer
Garriott was named "Game God" by PC Gamer in 1999
Garriott became the ninth inductee into the Academy of Interactive Arts and Sciences' Hall of Fame in 2006[73]
Garriott became the sixth recipient of the Game Developers Choice Lifetime Achievement Award in 2006[74]
Garriott was named an "Industry Legend" at the UK Develop Conference in 2007
Garriott received the British Interplanetary Society's Sir Arthur Clarke Award for Best Individual Achievement in 2009[75]
Garriott received the British Interplanetary Society's Astronaut Pin given to British born astronauts in 2009[75]
Garriott received the Society of NASA Flight Surgeons Lovelace Award for Contributions to Space Medicine in 2009
Garriott was inducted into the Environmental Hall of Fame in 2010.