By Frank Lovecen the beginning, Nolan Bushnell created PonEr.And he looked out over the laboratory floor andsaw that it was good. And he begat videogames,

which begat arcade games, which begat home video-game consoles and home-computer games.

Allmyths.This year, videogames are 25 years old. Yet their

history seems to have been distorted by more errorsthan the New York Mets ever made. Statements such as"Nolan Bushnell is the man who invented Ponq" pro-liferate in essays on the subject, but ignore the actualpatent-holders-and the videogame pioneers bef orethem.

Bushnell and the company he co-founded, Atari, mayindeed have hrmed stodgy "TV games" lnto futurisbc"irJeogames." But, ln fact, Bushnell's greatest contribu-tion to home games was to put the inventioris of others-together with a couple of his own-rrto one practical andeminently successful package. That combrration of cre-atvity and foresight certainly helped catapult videogamesinto the incredibly popular items they've become. Butthere were others whose contributions were pivotal to thedevelopment of videogames, and there were events andcoincidences which helped the inventors progress.

Here is the first complete history of one of the biggestvideo phenomena snce TV itseff.

r953-r95?The precursor of videogames is on the air: Wnky Dnk

ond You, a half-hour children's show on CBS-TV. Kids athome send aw'ay for a "magdc transparent screen" over-lay, a crayon and a "mag,ic cIoIh." Winky Drhk host JackBarry instructs viewers to draw life-saving essentials onthe overlay, such as a bridge that Woo{er can cross. It'sprobably the first example of interactve television.

1958lMhile most research centers regear to catch up with

Spubrik, one government lab becomes the incubator forthe birth of videogames. During an October open-houseat Brookhaven National Laboratory in Long Island, aphysicist named Willy Hiqinbotham demonstrates a tennisgame on the oscilloscope of a large computer. On a five-inch-diameter screen is a horizontal line (the "court") witha "net" perpendicular to it and a "ball" bouncing fromone side to ihe other. There are no paddles on thescreen; ball acbon is controlled through wired moduleswith a fire button and, to control shot angle, a knob.

"The instruction book that came with the computerdescribed how to plot trajectones and bouncing shapes,for research," remembers Higlnbotham. "i thouqht, 'Hell,this would make a good game.'" Working wiih colleagueDave Potter, "lt took me four hours to desigrn one and atechnician a couple of weeks to put it together." Thegame is a hit through three open.houses that autumn."Everybody stood in line to play. The other exhibits werepretty static, obvrously." Higinbotham.shows the gamethe next year on a 15 nch screen. He never applied fora patent, however. "The game seemed to me sort of anob.,rous thing. Even if I had," he reflects, "the gamewould've belonged to the government."

40 Video Review

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t962At MIT, an engrineering graduate shrdent named Steve

R. Russell is playrng hookey-or, more speclfically,Spcewor. He is playing this seminal videogame on themonitor of an 88 x 69 x 26-inch PDP-I computer costingabout $120,000. By mosi accounts, Russellhlmselforigrnated and dld much of the initial programming forthe game. Computer-networked throughoui the country,Spocewor is soon an underground fad among the com-munity of computer-users. Programmers adapt andchange the game through the years, though it remainsfundamentally a two-player battle between torpedo-finngspaceships.

r965Nolan K. Bushnell is introduced by a college friend to

Spcewor. Until the universily evenh-rally clamps downon the use of its million-dollar-plus computer for playinggames, Bushnell plays Spocewor regularly and evenmodifies the program to make it faster.

r966\Mhile waihng for a bus one day, Ralph Baer decides to

invent home videogames.Baer is chief engineer and manager of the Equipment

Design Division of Sanders Associates, a New Hampshlrecompany whose primary work is to design militaryeguipment. At the bus-stop, Baer is thinking back to anassignment gven him ln'51 by his employer at the time,Loral Electronics. A milltary-electronics manufacfu rer,Loral wanted to branch out by making and selling noth-ing less than the world's most advanced TV set, andchose Ralph Baer to design it. Baer built a protolype andsuggested numerous feahrres the company might want toadd. Among them: "TV games." Nothing came of it-thesei was deemed too expensive to produce.

On thls August day, however, Baer writes up, in anengineer's meticulous fashion, several pages of notes. BySeptember l, Baer has fleshed out his idea. By Sep-tember 6, Baer and engineer Robert Solomon completea conceph:al schemabc. By December, Baer recalls, "lhad a couple of spots moving on the screen. It becameobvious this was reasonably important."

l96ZEarly in the year, several more developments take

place at Sanders. Baer meets with Herbert Chapman, di-rector of research and development, and Louis Etlinger,director oi patents. "Herb Chapman was responsible forfunding activities such as this," says Baer, "and so I askedthat some research and development money we alreadyhad in the division get supplemented {or the express pur-pose of creating a small group to work on TV games."The group is formed.

In February, engfneer Wi]ham L. Harrison ioins thatgroup. By May, another engineer, William T. Rusch, ispart of it as well. Working in secret, the group completesa videogame appaiahrs within about a month. For thisextension of his original work, Baer will evenh-rallyrecelve the first of several related patents.

From September 28 to October 1, at a silver anniver-

Iune,1983 {l

sary celebration of the RCA Laboratories in Princeton,Nl, RCA engineers demonshate a computer-generatedgame of pool. The computer used is an RCA Specha70125. Cost: aboui $90,000. The game is crude-thereisn't even a cue-stick symbol-and RCA doesn't envisionany commercial potential.

The problem: The coin box is fammed with quarters.Magnavox, meanwhile, begins producing Odyssey

consoles with a slot for interchangeable game "cards,"making the Odyssey the flrst programmable console aswell as the first home console. 100,000 Odyssey con-soles are sold by the end of the year.

1968 r9z3The videogame gathers momenfum. By lanuary, the

Sanders group has an operating prototype based onRusch's work. The spot that Baer first put on the screen isnow being batted back and forth by two players-andthe ball even has a little English on it-thanks to Rusch.

In December, the group begins to woo consumer-elec-tronics firms, includlng General Electric, Magnavox,Motorola, RCA, Warwick Elechonics and Zenith.

r9zoBushnell, now working for Ampex, and co-worker S.

Fred (Ted) Dabney form the SyzyW Company. Inspiredby the computer game Spoceracr, Bushnell begins roughdesign work on a videogame that will eventually bechristened C om pu ter Spoce.

l9zlIn March, after a deal between Sanders and RCA falls

through, Magnavox takes an option on an exclusrvelicense for Sanders'game technology. Meanwhile, onMarch 15, Bushnell joins coin-op game maker NuttingAssociates. At night, Bushnell works on the half-finishedComputer Spoce wrth Dabney. A month or two later, aprototype of. Computer Spoce is more or less complete.

On Augmst 23, 197I, Bushnell signs an agreementwith Nutting licensing Computer Spoce from Syrygy.About 1,500 will be soid during '71 and'72.

Bill Pitts, a scientist at Stanford University, completes aprototype videogame based on Spcewor.

tgl2After 14 years, the first public videogames arrive.On lanuary 27, Magnavox exercises its Sanders option

and begins production of a consumer videogame consoledubbed the Magnavox Odyssey 100 (modellTL 200).

On May 23-25, the Odyssey game is demonstrated inBurlingame, CA. On May 24, Nutting engineer NolanBushnell is present. He wibresses a demonshation ofOdyssey's Ping-Pong game and plays it.

in June, Bushnell and Dabney leave Nutting andchange "Syzygy" to "Atari."

Ampex engineer Allen Alcom loins Atari, and one ofthe first assignments Bushneli gives him is to desrgn atennis-type videogame not unlike the one he saw.Bushnell and Alcorn confer often on saiient points, andaround Iune 27, Alcorn finishes work on the game thatwill later be known as Pong. "My goal was to keep it assmall and economical as possible," Alcom recalls. "lcouldn't design it cheaply enough, though," so Pongbecame a coin-op game.

Bushnell demonstrates Pong to Bally. Bally hrms himdown.

The temporarily dejected Bushneli places a Pong cout-op game in a Sunhyvale, CA, bar called Andy Capp's.After two days, the machine apparently brepks down.42 Video Review

Pongs popularity leads to Spce Roce, Pong Doublaand Go/crho coin-op games. The first copycat versionsbegin to appear. Odyssey sales are sluggnsh.

t9714Atari brings out Tonk, its first hit since Pong, and the

violent-game syndrome begun with Spocerarer continues.New Atari eng"ineer Bob Brown convinces the compa.nyto produce a home version of. Pong.

lgzsAtari sh:iles a dishibution deal with Sears, Roebuck &

Co., making it exclusive distributor of the home versionoI Pong. A dedicated (Pong-only) home consoie is devel-oped and in Sears stores by IaII. Pong is the runaway hitof the Christnas shopping season.

l9z6Videogames come home in force, thanks to a new in-

tegrated circuit (the AY-3-8500) designed in Scotland byGeneral Inshument engineer Gilbert Duncan Harrower.

Magnavox inhoduces its Odyssey 300, 400, 500 and3000 game consoles and the model BG 4305 TV setwith a game console built in. In Augmst, Fairchild in-hoduces iis Channel F Video Enteriainment System, thefirst to offer interchangeable games in carlridge form.

In September, RCA announces the development of aprogrammable game system; later ihat fall, NationalSemiconductor's programmable Adversary goes on sale,

In October, Wamer Communications buys Atari for areported $32 million.

l9'IZ lo the PresentThanks to General lrutrument's chip, the floodgates

open. RCA has its Sh:dio Ii programmable console,which soon disappears. Bally's console evolves into theAstrocade, which is gone by'83. Atari's VCS ls lnto-duced in'77.

In'78, Spoce ]nvqderE becomes an arcade-game hit.Atari's Aslerords outdoes it a year later. Then, in'80,Pqc-Man becomes a monster smash, ign:trting thevideogame explosion. Also in 'BO, Activision and Imagicform to produce VCS games. (BV '82, almost a dozenother companies wtlliotn them.)Meanwhile, the Odys-sey2 and Mattel Intellivlsion appear, wiih voice-synthesismodules developed for ihem by'82, by which time Coie-co's ColecoVision and GCE's Vectrex are also on storeshelves. With add-ons, the line between home compu-ters and game consoles vanishes. In the latest develop-ment, interactive videodisc games are inhoduced.

On October l, '83, Bushnell'3non-competition conhactwith Aiari will run out. He and Alcom vow to have a"revolutionary" game on the sheets by 10 a.m. If theyfulfillthat promise, it could become the first chapter inThe Hisiory of Videogames, Vol. II.n