Piancezas

Piancezas, known officially as the Piancezas Test, was the earliest known test console. The concept of Piancezas was first thought of by Danish inventor Magnus Jydekkard in 1880, who wanted to turn pictures into a moving game.

History
Jydekkard first conceptualised the idea of turning pictures into a moving game in 1880. He wanted to make a steel box and have a moving image, with the help of Eadweard Muybridge, as the screen and use an external controller to move the picture. It was meant for his infant daughter, who was two at the time.

Jydekkard weht trough dozens of ideas until his final design was finished in 1891, patented in the same year. He was determined when the blueprint was finished because he had spent three years designing the blueprints. He went to his mothers house to collect his camera to take a photo but when he returned, the workshop had burnt down, destroying the only copies of the blueprints. In 1892, he was going to try and remake the blueprints until the workshop burnt down a second time, killing Jydekkard in the process.

The patent expired in 1911 but Jydekkard's family renewed the patent until 1971, when they deemed the patent useless and unneeded. It was forgotten about until 1980, when the first true games consoles were being made.

In 1989, a project called "Reconstructing Piancezas, A 100th Anniversary Special" was held in New York, where scientists tried to recreate the lost console Piancezas using the only known picture of the barely complete blueprint and accounts told by Jydekkard himself of what the console looked like. The scientists came to no avail, saying that Jydekkard's console was too complex for its time and that modern inventors could not replicate it. No one has tried to replicate it since.