darwin was a programming game invented in august 1961 by victor a. vyssotsky, robert morris sr., and m. douglas mcilroy. (dennis ritchie is sometimes incorrectly cited as a co-author, but was not involved.) the game was developed at bell labs, and played on an ibm 7090 mainframe there. the game was only played for a few weeks before morris developed an "ultimate" program that eventually brought the game to an end, as no-one managed to produce anything that could defeat it.