Pong Launches: Bushnell Starts the Video Game Revolution

A coin-operated cabinet in a Sunnyvale, California, bar became so popular that it broke down within days because the coin box overflowed. Pong, installed at Andy Capp's Tavern on November 29, 1972, was the first commercially successful video game, and its success proved that electronic entertainment could generate serious money. Atari co-founder Nolan Bushnell had built an industry. Bushnell had been obsessed with interactive electronic entertainment since encountering Spacewar!, a game developed at MIT in the early 1960s. His first commercial attempt, Computer Space, was too complicated for bar patrons. For Pong, engineer Al Alcorn designed the simplest possible game: two paddles and a ball, controlled by knobs, with a score displayed at the top. Bushnell told Alcorn the game should be so intuitive that a drunk person could play it. The instructions read: "Avoid missing ball for high score." The prototype at Andy Capp's attracted immediate attention. Patrons lined up before the bar opened. The machine earned four times what a typical pinball machine generated. When it broke down, the bar owner called Alcorn, who discovered the coin mechanism had jammed because the milk carton serving as a coin box was overflowing with quarters. Bushnell realized he had a phenomenon and began manufacturing Pong machines as fast as Atari's small team could build them. Pong was not truly original. Ralph Baer had created a similar game for the Magnavox Odyssey home console, released earlier in 1972, and Magnavox later won a patent infringement suit. But Pong captured public imagination and launched the arcade era. Within two years, Atari sold over 8,000 cabinets. By 1975, a home version became a best-selling Christmas gift. The video game industry, now generating over $180 billion annually, traces its commercial origins to a broken coin box in a California tavern.