Nolan Bushnell was born on the 5th of February 1943 in Utah, USA where he also grew up. Even as a child Bushnell showed interest in inventing , even burning down his family’s garage with a homemade liquid fuel rocket mounted on a roller skate. Bushnell also showed a talent for business and when his father died when Bushnell was 15 he took over the family’s concrete business (Wikipedia, 2004).
It was when Bushnell attended the University of Utah that his passion for video games emerged. In 1970, while studying the basics of computer games, managing an amusement park and playing tournament chess Bushnell invented the first computerized video game, Computer Space. However, it was too complicated for mass production.
In 1971, Bushnell invented a simpler version called Pong, after seeing Magnavox Odyssey's version of the video game. After great success with Pong, Bushnell founded Atari on June 27th 1972 with his partner Ted Dabney. (Bushnell enjoyed playing the Japanese chess game "Go", where "Check" translated as "Atari" in Japanese, hence the company name) (Wikipedia, 2004). The next few years saw a great success for Atari who were the leaders in a thriving video games industry.
During the 70's and up to the mid 80's, Atari was the recognized leader in all areas of videogames. Starting out and establishing the Video Arcade industry, Atari set the stage for the 10 billion dollar industry with the release of Pong (Borrell, 2001).
In 1976, Bushnell sold Atari to Time Warner for $28 million and Bushnell eventually exited the organisation in the 1978. (Atari Museum, 2000) In 1977, Atari marketed the Atari Video Computer System (2600), in January 1979 Atari unvelied its first computer during the Winter Consumer Electronics Show and in 1982 the Atari 5200 was released. By 1983, the Atari division had made $2 billion, its greatest success in Atari's history. Other video consoles released by Atari were, the 7800, XEGS, Lynx and Jaguar.
However, after a few years Atari's success began to diminish due to stiff competition and internal issues. Atari was greatly affected by the crash of 1983 which saw the organisation lose $500 million (Movie Prop, 1997).
Meanwhile, Bushnell had founded another company, the successful American fast-food pizza restaurants Chuck E. Cheese in 1977. These restaurants allowed children to eat out as well as play electronic games.
To date Bushnell has founded 18 companies, including personal computers and robotics, but he also continues to develop computer games (Borrell, 2001).
Atari, however ceased to exist in 1996, but has has been re-invented by Infogames in 2001.
Reference List
Atari Museum (2000) Atari Games, retrieved 20 October, 2004, from http://www.atarimuseum.com/videogames/
Borrell, J. (2001) 'Still playing after all these years', Upside, vol.13,
iss.10, pp.110-116.
Movie Prop (1997) Movieprop.com's Atari Video Game Pages, retrieved 19 October, 2004, from http://movieprop.com/videogames/atari/atari.htm
Wikipedia (2004) Nolan Bushnell, retrieved 19 October, 2004, from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nolan_Bushnell
Kimberley Howard 10:31, 21 Oct 2004 (EST)
Kimberley Howard 18:29, 19 Oct 2004 (EST)
Kimberley Howard 19:51, 5 Oct 2004 (EST)
Kimberley Howard 18:23, 9 Sep 2004 (EST)
