When did "Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon Originate?"

Cafe Society
1

The Kevin Bacon Mastercard Ad thread got me thinking about this game. When did it actually originate? I remember hearing about the six degrees of separation theory in 1985. The news reports that I have read seem to place the origin of the game in 1996, but I am almost certain that I played the game earlier than that. I would guess that it would have been after “Six Degrees of Separation” in 1992. When is the earliest that you are sure you heard about the game? Does anyone know of a good source for its history?

2

it’s definitely after 1992. us.imdb.com pegs sdos as 1993. i’d guess 1994, 1995, or 1996, but definitely not later than that.

3

I can’t believe that I’m sacrificing my perfect record as a lurker by posting this, but…
The Kevin Bacon game originated around 1994 in the Usenet group rec.arts.movies when he was proclaimed the center of the universe and the degrees of seperation began to be calculated.

Can’t provide a cite for the first posting, put this is pretty close:
http://makeashorterlink.com/?E2E661D9

Quar

-Don’t I feel like an old timer now…

4

Thanks, Quar. I was pretty sure that I had encountered the game before July of 1995.

5

I just want to ad - that was a pretty darn amazing reference there. I’m really impressed.

Thanks again, and welcome.

6

Thanks!

Fortunately, I was reading the newsgroup back when it was first posted back in the golden years of Usenet.

It’s great to see large parts of Net history preserved by Google Groups.
BTW, don’t forget the Oracle of Bacon for all of your Bacon Number needs: http://www.cs.virginia.edu/oracle/

Quar

7

Yes, and now that you’ve posted once, you will soon become addicted like the rest of us. Welcome to the boards!

8

A few years ago I got this book for my dad. The authors are the ones who claim to have invented the game.

9

I first remember hearing about the Kevin Bacon game back in my first year of college, which would put it in 1991 or 1992.

It didn’t have the name “Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon” or “The Kevin Bacon Game” back then… come to think of it, it didn’t even really have a name.

Someone had told us about a neat way to show that Kevin Bacon was the center of the universe, and then told us to pick an actor, and so on.

Back when I first heard about it you could have as many “degrees” as you wanted. It may have begun to take it’s current shape around 1994, but it’s got to be older than that.

10

The game was invented in 1993 by Mike Ginelli, Craig Fass, and Brian Turtle when they were attending Albright College in Pennsylvania.

From here .

11

Claiming to have invented it and actually inventing it are two different things.

One tell-tale sign: Not knowing the original name of the game: Makin’ Bacon.

12

Currently reading The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell. Gladwell lays out how seemingly small things make a big difference.

The Six Degrees thing is reported in chapter 2. A psychologist named Stanley Milgram experimented in the late 1960’s to determine “how are human beings connected?” He asked people to pass on a chain letter to people they knew to forward it to a pre-selected final person in as few steps as possible. It ended up taking an average of 5-6 steps.

Gladwell’s citations are: Stanley Milgram, “The Small World Problem,” Psychology Today (1967), vol I, pp. 60-67. For a (highly) theoretical treatment of the small-world subject, see: Manfred Kochen (ed.) “The Small World” (Norwood, New Jersey; Ablex Publishing Corp., 1989)