Tag: Atari
Tech Time Warp: A game “so simple that any drunk in any bar could play”
Sometimes the best ideas really are the simplest, and compared with the complexity of today’s video games or even some of its early pioneering contemporaries, that was the basis of Pong. Released on Nov. 29, 1972, Pong was—in the words...
Pioneers in Tech: Carol Shaw, Atari video game designer
“I was good at math. I entered a bunch of math contests and won awards. Of course, people would say, “Gee, you’re good at math—for a girl. That was kind of annoying. Why shouldn’t girls be good at math?” This...
Tech Time Warp: On the hunt for technology easter eggs
Have you ever typed “answer to life, the universe, and everything” into Google? In a nod to The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, Google returns “42” as a calculator result. Or perhaps you’ve explored the police call box on the...
Pioneers in Tech: Jerry Lawson, pre-Atari game console designer
In the nascent days of video games, gaming consoles had limitations — namely, users were limited to one game, such as Al Alcorn’s groundbreaking Pong. But a group of engineers at the semiconductor company Fairchild — including the subject of...