History of Computers - Pong

By Alec Winograd

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Pong was created in 1972 by Atari, though its concept was developed earlier. Contrary to popular belief, Pong was not the first video game created. The first game made for a computer was OXO, a tic-tac-toe style game, which was later followed by the much more popular Spacewar!; however, it was the first widely spread video game.

Overview

Nolan Bushnell, a University of Utah grad, created the company Atari in 1972. He hired Al Alcorn as Atari's first engineer. Bushnell asked Alcorn to create a ping pong like game. He said it would be sold to GE, but lied, only wanting Alcorn to gain experience; Bushnell originally wanted Atari's first game to be a racing game. However, Bushnell like Alcorn's game and decided to market it. He put the first Pong arcade game in a California bar. Here is an account of its release:

• "One of the regulars approached the Pong game inquisitively and studied the ball bouncing silently around the screen as if in a vacuum. A friend joined him. The instructions said: 'Avoid missing ball for high score.' One of [them] inserted a quarter. There was a beep. The game had begun. They watched dumbfoundedly as the ball appeared alternately on one side of the screen and then disappeared on the other. Each time it did the score changed. The score was tied at 3-3 when one player tried the knob controlling the paddle at his end of the screen. The score was 5-4, his favor, when his paddle made contact with the ball. There was a beautifully resonant "pong" sound, and the ball bounced back to the other side of the screen. 6-4. At 8-4 the second player figured out how to use his paddle. They had their first brief volley just before the score was 11-5 and the game was over...Seven quarters later they were having extended volleys, and the constant pong noise was attracting the curiosity of others at the bar. Before closing, everybody in the bar had played the game. The next day people were lined up outside Andy Capp's at 10 A.M. to play Pong. Around ten o'clock that night, the game suddenly died." The game had died because the coin-op mechanism was full.

In 1974 Atari then decided to make a home version of pong. Sears Catalog bought 150,000 Pong games and sold them in their 1975 Christmas Catalog. Pong's immense popularity did not decline until the invention of more advanced gaming systems.

Significance

Pong was not the first video game created nor was it the first commercially available video game. However, Pong was the first widely available video game. Pong was one of the impetus's for the creation of the $27.5 billion video game industry. Pong led to the invention of the Gameboy, Playstation, Xbox, Wii, and modern computer games such as Spore. Pong was born from military technology, and set up the relationship between the video game market and the military.

External Links

• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pong
• http://www.designboom.com/eng/education/pong.html
• http://www.pong-story.com/intro.htm
• http://www.ideafinder.com/history/inventions/pong.htm