The Electronic Delay Storage Automatic Calculator (EDSAC) mainframe computer was built in the University of Cambridge's Mathematical Laboratory between 1946 and 6 May 1949, when it ran its first program,[1][2] and remained in use until 11 July 1958.

[4][5] As a part of a thesis on human-computer interaction, Sandy Douglas, a doctoral candidate in mathematics at the university, used one of these screens to portray other information to the user; he chose to do so via displaying the current state of a game.

[8] Around the same time that OXO was completed, Christopher Strachey expanded a draughts program he had originally written in 1951 and ported it to the Ferranti Mark 1, which showed the state of the game on a CRT display.

The player entered their input using a rotary telephone controller, selecting which of the nine squares on the board they wished to move next.

[8] OXO was not available to the general public and could only be played in the University of Cambridge's Mathematical Laboratory by special permission, as the EDSAC could not be moved, and both the computer and the game were only intended for academic research purposes.