Pong at 54: How a Tavern Test in 1972 Launched the Arcade Industry
Atari's table-tennis game proved people would pay to play video games in public.
Before there was a games industry, there was Pong. Atari, founded in 1972 by Nolan Bushnell and Ted Dabney, gave new engineer Allan Alcorn a simple training project: a table-tennis game. It turned out good enough to sell.
The tavern test
Atari placed a prototype cabinet in Andy Capp's Tavern in Sunnyvale, California. Players kept coming back, and the story goes that the machine stopped working because its coin box was jammed full. Atari released Pong commercially in late 1972.
Why it mattered
- It was simple: two paddles, one ball, and an on-screen score.
- It showed bars and arcades that video games could earn real money.
- A flood of imitators followed, and in 1975 Atari's home version, sold through Sears, brought Pong into living rooms.
The legacy
Pong turned Atari into the first big name in video games and set up the arcade boom that peaked in the early 1980s. Every coin-op and every online lobby since owes something to that first tavern cabinet.
Reference: Wikipedia, Pong and Atari, Inc.