Pong and Atari, Inc.

The electrical engineer Nolan Bushnell sees Spacewar! during his studies and believes that the game can be used commercially. The adaptation, which he built in 1971 together with his colleague Ted Dabney under the name Computer Space, remains unsuccessful, according to Bushnell’s assumption, because the operation is too complex. When he attends a presentation of the Odyssey in 1972, the tennis game included in it becomes the inspiration for Pong, a game with only two knobs and the simple guide “Avoid missing ball for high score”.

A few days after Bushnell and Dabney put the prototype in a bar, the device no longer works, because the coin slot is over-boiled and people are still forming a snake to play before the bar opens.

The success attracts imitators, but because the newly founded company Atari, Inc. has not yet applied for a patent, it only remains to produce innovations – the beginning of modern video game history.