Trigger Happy
without having to learn it first. He left Nutting, determined to go it alone.
And so Pong was born. “Avoid missing ball for high score” ran the only line of instructions on Pong’s cabinet. It was a very simple version of tennis. A square dot of light represented the ball, and two vertical lines at each side of the screen were the bats. Players only had to use one hand to rotate the paddle control, thus facilitating simultaneous beer consumption. The first Pong machine, hand-built in Bushnell’s apartment, was set up in Andy Capp’s Tavern, a California pool bar. It was soon collecting $300 a week in quarters—six times as much as the neighboring pinball machine.
Amazed at the game’s success, Bushnell founded his own company, the now-legendary Atari (named after a term used in the Japanese chesslike game “Go”), which was staffed by young, Led Zeppelin– loving, herb-smoking hippies. Atari released the first commercial Pong in November 1972. It was a huge success, and altogether ten thousand of the machines were manufactured. Four years later, Nolan Bushnell sold Atari to Warner for $28 million, staying on as chairman himself. Silicon entrepreneurialism, it seemed, was the new rock’n’roll.
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