How Video Games Invaded The Home TV Set – Chapter 30

History Redux

Now, it should be clear that the 1972 Odyssey ITL-200 game unit was a production version of our „Brown Box“, the switch programmable video game system which we had built at Sanders in 1967/68. Atari’s Pong game, on the other hand, was a knock-off of the Odyssey unit’s ping-pong game. As noted above, Nolan Bushnell played that game hands-on at the Burlingame, CA Magnavox dealership’s open house in May of 1972. His engineer, Alan Alcort did a great job designing Pong with its 100 or so (TTL) integrated circuits located on a one foot square printed circuit board … ok for a coin-op machine, but out of the question pricewise for a home game.

In subsequent years, it would increasingly bug me to hear Nolan Bushnell referred to as the „father“ of all video games. He certainly deserves to be recognized as the „father of the arcade video game industry“. The father of video games was and is yours truly. Meanwhile, Sanders and Magnavox had started to go after the infringers of our various video game patents, including Atari, Nolan Bushnell’s company. On the stand, in court, in depositions Nolan had to admit to the facts. That didn’t change what he said in public. That continued to tick me off. But as I’ve mentioned, the lawyers told me to cool it.

1976 – The Lawsuits Start

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