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Pong is a first generation video game released originally as a coin-operated arcade game by Atari Inc. on November 29, 1972. Pong is based on the sport of table tennis (or "ping pong"), and named after the sound generated by the circuitry when the ball is hit. The word Pong is a registered trademark of Atari Interactive, while the term "pong" is used to describe the genre of "bat and ball" video games.

Contrary to popular belief, Pong was not the world's first video arcade game (Computer Space, by Nutting Associates, was released in 1971). However, Pong was the first video game to achieve widespread popularity in both the arcade and home console markets, and it is credited with launching the initial boom in the video game industry. The popularity of Pong also led to a successful patent infringement lawsuit from the makers of an earlier video game for the Magnavox Odyssey.

Origins and development

The earliest electronic ping-pong game was played on an analog computer using an oscilloscope as a display, and was developed by William A. Higinbotham at the Brookhaven National Laboratory in 1958. His game was called Tennis for Two.

In September 1966, Ralph Baer, then working for Sanders Associates, wrote a short paper outlining a system for playing simple video games on a home television set. Originally, his chief engineer Sam Lackoff asked Baer to build a television set. Baer decided to add the new concept of playing games on a television screen. He developed a computer version of a ping-pong game, and his ideas were patented. Magnavox licensed the technology from Sanders Associates, and in the middle of 1972, the company began selling the Magnavox Odyssey, the first home video game console. The Odyssey was capable of playing a dozen different games, including a basic version of table tennis and a slightly more complex version of tennis.

Displaying animated graphics on a television screen and reacting in real time to user input would have required more computing power than 1960s consumer products could deliver. Although computing technology had progressed significantly by 1970, the tasks performed by a modern-day cell phone would still have required a mainframe computer the size of a small apartment. Despite this, it was possible to create a tennis video game by restricting the graphics to just one line per paddle, a dotted line for the net and a square for the ball.

In May 1972, the Magnavox Odyssey was demonstrated at a trade show in Burlingame, California. Nolan Bushnell attended the event and played the Odyssey's table tennis game. In June 1972, Bushnell and Ted Dabney founded a new company which they named Atari, with a starting capital of $250 each. Bushnell was a keen player of the board game Go, and the word Atari in Japanese has a meaning similar to the term check in chess.
The original Atari upright cabinet. The display was an ordinary black and white television set.
The original Atari upright cabinet. The display was an ordinary black and white television set.

Bushnell was concerned that his pioneering 1971 video arcade game, Computer Space, had been too complicated for some users. In an interview, he said of the game: "You had to read the instructions before you could play, people didn't want to read instructions. To be successful, I had to come up with a game people already knew how to play; something so simple that any drunk in any bar could play." Bushnell envisioned creating a video car driving game for arcades and hired Allan (Al) Alcorn, an electronic engineer who had recently finished college. Concerned that this project would be too complex for his new employee, Bushnell's first request to Alcorn was to create a ping-pong game. According to Alcorn, Nolan decided to have him produce an arcade version of the Odyssey's Tennis game. The game that Alcorn created was fun to play and since the name Ping-Pong was already trademarked, it was called simply Pong. The dominant arcade game at the time was pinball, and unlike pinball, Pong was conceived as a game for two players. Amusement industry experts were unsure about Pong's potential, and initially there was little interest in the product.