While the aforementioned PONG was the first videogame to achieve extreme success with the public, the first videogame ever made in the United States was William Higinbotham’s Tennis For Two, which was finished on October 18th, 1958. This predates PONG by about 50 years, and, while Tennis For Two certainly didn’t reach the level of critical acclaim that PONG did, it was by no means a failure. “Visitors waited in line at Brookhaven National Laboratory to
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play ‘Tennis For Two’, an electronic tennis game that is unquestionably a forerunner of the modern videogame”
(https://www.bnl.gov/about/history/firstvideo.php 1) Higinbothom had built his machine in a similar fashion to an oscilloscope, a machine that was able to display 2-D images on a screen using varying voltages, where changes in the electrical signal equated to a change in displayed images. This was the perfect model for Higinbotham to use, as he had countless experiences with the device, whether it be from working on radar systems or simply displaying information for his constructions. The time he had spent with oscilloscopes in the years prior helped made sure that his Tennis For Two would be able to function properly. As one of his partners, David Potter, noted, “Higinbotham’s circuits were rock solid. I found his work to be so beautiful, so simple. For someone involved in electronics, these really were something to behold”
(https://www.bnl.gov/about/history/firstvideo.php 2). Higinbotham’s ability to create such a device that was never really seen before sparked interest in the mind of many other innovators at the time. While Tennis For Two wasn’t the start of the video game industry, it laid the foundation that other people would be able to build upon, and one of those people was Ralph Baer.
After leaving Germany before the outbreak of World War I with his parents and sister, Baer graduated from the National Radio Institute and the American Television Institute of Technology, with degrees Television Engineering and Radio Service. After some time working at radio service stores in Manhattan, he eventually joins Sanders Associates and becomes the Division Manager and Chief Engineer for Equipment Design. It’s at this point when Higinbotham’s Tennis
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for Two is released, and Baer, who has profound knowledge on TV’s and electronic devices, envisions ways that videogames could be brought home and be played on the
television. Eight years after the release of Tennis for Two, Baer scribbles “a detailed four-page outline for a “game box” that would allow people to play board, action, sports and other games on almost any American television set.”
(http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/08/business/ralph-h-baer-dies-inventor-of-odyssey-first-system-for-home-video-games.html?_r=1 2) The “game box” (also known as the “brown box”) that Baer had illustrated, however, took 5 years to develop and only $2,500 of spendings on research and materials. Despite the time and low budget, the end result was revolutionary. Sanders Associates had agreed to license Baer’s system to Magnavox, which began selling the system as the Odyssey, and it was able to sell 130,000 units in the summer of 1972. Unlike Tennis for Two, the Odyssey was more accessible to everyone in America and offered a sense of immersion, having been said to make the TV “an extension of you, the player.” Being the first home console in history, the Odyssey did have its flaws, such as a lack of games to play, which eventually led
to slower sales, only selling 200,000 more units combined over the next three years. However, it was able to continue the domino effect that Tennis for Two had started. By proving that there was indeed a market in videogames, more and more people wanted a chance to strike gold, as Baer and his team had come close to. Evidently, two men by the names of Nolan Bushnell and Ted Dabney started work on their company named “Atari”, which was Japanese for “check” as used in a game of Chess. After the release of their first, and America’s first, arcade cabinet, Computer
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Space, which only sold 1500 units nationwide as it was hailed as too difficult and boring, the duo stayed determined and hired Al Alcorn to program games. As a test of his skill, Bushnell informed Alcorn that he was under a contract with General Electric to create a table-tennis game, similar to the one seen on the Odyssey. While there was no actual contract, Alcorn was dedicated to programming a great game, and in only 4 months time he finished what he titled PONG, only because the name Ping-Pong was copyrighted. Both Bushnell and Dabney were impressed with the final product and decided to place the cabinet in a local shop in Sunnyvale, California. What had started as an initiation test was looking to be a big hit, as the quarter box was constantly being filled by the nearby children. Atari saw the opportunity, and when they decided to sell the arcade cabinet to retailers worldwide, the impact on the industry would be profound.