Arcade Games
While he's attending the University of Utah getting his Bachelor of Science, a young student named Nolan Bushnell spends most of his time playing Russell's Spacewar on the PDP-1 mainframe at the university, one of only three educational facilities in the U.S. that can afford the computer monitors to display it.
When 1971 rolls around Bushnell is convinced that he's on the right track, and he leaves Ampex to work on
the Computer Space game full time. When he finally completes it that year he finds a buyer in Nutting
Associates, a manufacturer of coin-op trivia games. 1,500 of the units are built, with a futuristic design
and fiberglass cabinet, but the game does not sell well.
Despite the inability of his first product to catch on with the public, Nutting Associates asks Bushnell to take a shot at developing another game. He is unable to reach an equitable agreement with managment, however, and Bushnell leaves to create his own company with partner Ted Dabney. Their intention is to design the games and then have a large company actually produce them. The initial venture capital is $250 from Bushnell and $250 from Dabney, their profits from Computer Space.
Pong!
Bushnell picks a name from Go, a Japanese game he is fond of playing. Atari is the equivalent of "check" in the game, and that is the name they pick. The company is officially established on June 27, 1972, by a 27 year old Bushnell. The first product is to be a driving game, and Al Alcorn, the engineer Ampex had hired to replace Bushnell, is brought in to build it. But Bushnell changes his mind and decides that they should first break newcomer Alcorn in with a simplistic tennis game, where the player controls a paddle knocking a ball back and forth across the screen.
Though Bushnell wants impossible-for-the-day sound effects like a roaring crowd, Alcorn pulls beeps and blips
that are already present in the circuitry for the sound...and when Alcorn describes the noise of the ball hitting
the paddles, he inadvertently names the game...PONG. The electronic guts are entirely solid-state and hardwired...no
ROMs or microprocessors are present. This baby is made to do one thing and one thing only. Play PONG.