Atari

In 1972, Atari was formed and by August the first Pong game was completed. But, let’s go back in time to get the full background.

Early days

In 1966 at the University of Utah, Nolan Bushnell saw something called Spacewar!, he worked with Ted Dabney and they found that they had some shared interests.  They called their version Computer Space (not Space Force).  They produced 2,300 units but they only sold 750. However, at the time this was very complex and it really didn’t sit well with the average user.  So they started to look at different ideas.

Magnavox Odyssey

Magnavox released the Magnavox Odyssey the very first home video console in which you could connect to a television set.

The Odyssey sold about 100,000 units, which made it an OK seller. They put out the following:

• Odyssey 100
• Odyssey 200

This is where they (Atari) saw a game called Tennis and thus something called Pong came along.

Then something came around called Atari’s arcade game Pong. That is when more of the public became interested in the video game industry. So we had the following:

Atari

In 1972 Atari was formed on June 27, 1972, and the first Pong was completed and it and they offered Bally to License Pong, but they had no clue what to do with it. So Bushnell and Dabney created a test unit and put it in a local establishment to see how it faired.

It faired so well that they made 12 more test units and they were making about $400 dollars a week.  The machines would break down and when they came out to look at it they found out the coins where jammed.

Dabney left the Atari and selling his part for $250,000

Products

Atari put out the following:

• Pong
• Atari 2600
• Atari 8-bit Family
• Atari 5200

In 1976, Atari was sold to Warner Communications for $28 Million not bad.

Is this a gadget

Yes, in my opinion, this is a gadget as it was the start of the video game industry and leading up to some awesome gadgets.

I will talk some more about these gaming systems.