Atari released Pong, helping launch the video game industry
On this day · 29 November 1972
Two paddles, a bouncing dot, and one instruction — "avoid missing ball for high score" — turned a training exercise into an industry.
On November 29, 1972, the young company Atari, founded by Nolan Bushnell, introduced its arcade game Pong. Players nudged on-screen paddles up and down to deflect a bouncing ball past an opponent — table tennis distilled to its barest electronics.
The game began as a throwaway assignment. Engineer Allan Alcorn built it as a training exercise, and Atari’s founders were surprised enough by the result to manufacture it. A prototype tested in a California tavern reportedly jammed because its coin box overflowed with quarters.
Its lone on-screen instruction read: “Avoid missing ball for high score.”
Pong was the first commercially successful video game, and its boxy cabinets spread quickly across bars and arcades. It did not invent the medium — the Magnavox Odyssey reached homes earlier that year — but it proved games could be a business, helping ignite the modern video game industry. An original cabinet now sits in the Computer History Museum.
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