This week's episode of the Wal-card Podcast is brought to you by another Surfist and their Fashioned Ore. What does that mean? Another Surfist and their Fashioned Ore. Jared, you're talking gibberish.
Another Surfist and their Fashioned Ore. Another Surfist and their Fashioned Ore. Another Surfist and their Fashioned Ore. Why is this happening?
Wait a second. I think he's giving us a coded messy to reverse. I'm going to play backwards. We're on in a chaffronet.
Same first, Serlin. We're on in a chaffronet, same first, Serlin. We're on in a chaffronet, same first, Serlin. Not cool, Jared.
Seriously dude, not cool. We're on in a chaffronet, same person. Welcome to the wild card podcast. I'm your host, Jared Eaton, and my co-pilots on this journey to wherever are my good friends, Jeff Curtis.
And he roller coaster, he got flim flam talk talks, he got five vaginas, he don't got no filter, he's saying one and one and one is not so good math, he is very pretty, rondelaire. Thank you, it's awesome. That's really my favorite nickname. Thank you.
It took me some time to figure out how to work into that rhythm. Nonsense, that was specific to you, what's it just nonsense like they're nonsense ones? I don't have to. I would say I would say one plus one plus one is one.
I just want to leave him within a super of not sure how to move forward after one and one and one. Which is true. Speaking of putting everyone in a super, Ron, we tell the wonderful listeners, the sweethearts who are at home right now, or in the future, looking back on this time capsule. Right.
We tell them this podcast is all about? This podcast is about keeping your expectations low so they're never disappointed. There you go. That's absolutely encapsulates our podcast.
He encapsulates? Is there an H in that word? He does have Ham and his mouth. I'm hunched over my ham croissant like a lion golem over the ring.
Because we are nothing if not professional. What I'm saying is we are nothing. So, those are two options. And Ron, when he has Ham and his mouth, has H's added to many words.
Absolutely. It's the rule. It's the rule. That's the rule.
So, as we get into the episode, we love to have a little favorite section. I love to have them. Share a bit of ourselves with everyone else. I love to share myself.
I know that's true. Oh yeah. And this week it's actually kind of provided by Jeff. I'll share that.
Jeff, if you want to share that with the decades. When I was a teenager, I got this game called The Ungame, which is not a game. It's just a, you go around this board and pick cards and you answer the card. And it's really just about bonding and getting to know people.
And so, Jared's been having to come up with a lot of favorite questions. 79, exactly. This is number 80. Yeah.
And he was talking about his guest tank being a little low on these favorite questions. So, I went through the game yesterday and I'm looking at each one of these little cards. And I just carded like 90, 95% of them. But I gave like 15, 20 to Jared as possible.
All right. I picked up a few that I think are pretty interesting. All right. Let's do this.
What would you do if you had a magic wand? Oh, magic wand. What would you do magic wand? Which means I could do anything I want.
Hypothetically. That's a bad thing for me to have. It's true. Rob would use it for evil, of course.
Most likely. I would use it for game. Yeah, well, I would use my magic wand to make a theater available to do heroicists in or TM&N and you know, you put the production on and you know, be successful. That's what I would use the magic wand for.
I would definitely start with money. Yeah. Just know down about it. Now, I would create a money for myself where I didn't have money needs.
I would still work because I just couldn't. I couldn't stop teaching right now. Well, I would work at Jeff's Theater. Yeah.
That's where I would go. Money would be the hype man. Sure. I'd be the face of the place.
Bring it on. Well, both of you could face it later. Because now you're serving as your passion and art. Right.
Right. Yeah. Other than that. I would also help some of the people out in the financials.
Yeah. If I can just make money show up, you know. I know I would do that. I might use my magic wand to you in the government shutdown.
Yeah. Yeah. Perhaps. Perhaps.
Could you turn our president into a human? I could probably. I could probably replace him with a human. That would be lovely.
Well, the next human up in line is a much more human. It might be actually less human. That's true. But yes, magic wand.
Two chicks. Magic wand. Okay. That's where it goes man.
Two chicks bucket list gone. Done. Do you want some? Do you want a hand?
I don't want to talk about it. You said chicks. I'm thinking little chickens. Maybe chickens.
So he wants. Yeah. That's a joke. Yeah.
Yeah. That's what it is. You keep believing that pal. If you could receive a sixth sense, what would you want to be?
Before we answer that question, I just want to point out we have more than five senses. I have the air eye, my friend. Psychic ability. Psychic ability.
You use it very poorly. I know, right? I usually don't see things done. But we have sight, sound, touch, taste, earring.
We have all of those. But you also have several of them. You have thermal detection. Your body can tell it's hot or cold.
You have no sisception, which is the ability to detect pain. You have proprioception, which is a sense of where your limbs are in space. If I held this pin in front of you, could you grab it? He did it.
Everyone, he did it. Jeff grabbed a pin. Because you can detect the space around you. You know where your limbs are.
You know where things are in that space. Other than just not just sight. You can also have, I don't know if there's probably an aim for this one. I just want to head to my head.
You can recall places you've been. Like a map. That's a good one. That's a three dimensional space.
We have more than six senses. But if you could have another one, what would it be? Gosh, I don't know. I feel like I'm complicit with that already.
Maybe I said to him. I'm not even sure. I could use that. I'm usually dower.
I want the sense to be able to start fires with my mind. Oh! It was pyro. There's only one way to use that.
You can't use that for good. It's not the best. Oh man, look at all those plants growing around that place. I can take care of that.
I can take care of that. I can save the people. If I had a sense it would be the power of water flowers making pretty for a playground. Oh you're dating.
I already do that then. Please don't hear that from the public. Oh I won't do it in my time. Please don't do it again Ron.
All right. All right. Why are plants or shaped like toilets if they're not meant to be used like that? Right?
Right. One of the questions is the ages. What's next? Oh you already answered.
That's your answer. That's my answer. I would like the ability to read minds as long as I can turn on. Oh I don't.
As long as I can turn on. I don't want you to read my mind. I don't. I think you should know better than to.
That's why I can turn off. I don't want to get in there. Don't get in there. I don't get in there.
I don't get in there. I don't get in there. If I could read my mind I'd turn it down. So here's the thing.
I would have so much fun with it. I would like with my students I would just like get inside their brain and like tear them apart. It'd be so fun. I can see those mind and be in spent like going.
It would just be for sure. Hey motherfucker. You don't think about me that way. And then be like what?
I would say I wouldn't be about what do they think about me. I would just be like thinking about like I would say the thing they're thinking and just all I'm going to do is upset people really. So you're just like a gauge. Absolutely.
It's on full right now. Okay, well that's fair. Can I ask? I'm not the sense to be able to block Jerry's from reading my mind.
Dang it. I don't want anybody. I don't want anybody. I don't want any wall card mines.
All right, that's good. Nobody should as a message to the day kids, don't go reading these minds. Don't go reading these minds. Actually, I've been asking for this one.
You're there. It's easy if you try. It's true to be honest though. You guys should know us well enough if you've listened to a couple of episodes.
I know where they are. Melissa Manchester did a song called Can you Read My Mind? Can you read my mind? And it was in Superman.
People make fun of it, but I love it. I love, can you read my mind by Melissa Manchester? Okay, I'm not ashamed. All right guys, final question.
Yes. Of all of the material possessions you have, what do you enjoy the most? How many points is this worth? This is 4.23.
Okay, well math. For all the material possessions you own, what do you value the most? Ah. So it could be things that have like sentimental value, where it could just be like my TV.
My computer, because that's where I do all my work. Ah, ah. Yeah, all my stuff's cloud based, so I'm good there. For me, if I was to lose something, I would miss the most of my book collection.
Yeah. Because I have a library in my house that's just books. Yeah. So like if I lost my movies, I'd be sad if I lost my TV, I'd be sad if I lost my video games, I'd be sad if I lost my books, I'd be pretty devastated.
Yeah, I have a lot of books, but it'd be my computer, because I couldn't be able to record music. I wouldn't be able to do a lot of stuff that I need. It's not, yeah. And it costs a lot to replace.
So probably my car, but just for pragmatic reasons. Yeah, I'm not really attached to any real material things. I got a sentimental answer as well. Yeah.
And I appreciate that. I do not. I'm sorry. I do not.
I'm sorry. When I started becoming a pastor, a mother bought me a Bible, and that's the Bible I used to give all my servants, the Bible I'd use to officiate weddings. It's the one that I read and studied when I was a pastor. So that one has a lot of meaning because my mom didn't go to church when I was a kid.
My dad took me every Sunday when my parents married and my mom didn't get when they went to the hospital. She does go now with her husband. But the fact that she bought that for me even as someone who really wasn't a believer. Yeah, that's nice.
That's really nice. Yeah. You wanna sit to my other kid? No, my car.
No. Well, there are things that I wouldn't wanna lose, such as the, that I don't have a computer anymore because the computers have died, such as the first musical I wrote, Chris McSeevin. But if you ever emailed it to somebody. Well, there are hard copies of the script around, but there's the recordings of the music that we did in this recording studio after we did the workshop.
There are things that would be hard to replace or impossible to replace that, things like that. So yeah, that would be hard. But again, the things that I would say sentimentally are basically the stuff that I've written, the stuff that I've worked on to create. I've got a lot of books.
When I had a Bible that I read all the time, that I read so much it was falling apart, and there would have been a, there was a time that I would have taken, saved that, at this point, as far as I'm concerned, you know, you can always get another Bible. There's things, most of the things that aren't replaceable are the things that I created that only I have. And then, you know, I would have to reproduce, which I wouldn't, you know, there are things that you wouldn't reproduce that you want to, but you don't want to lose. Right, right.
So, the, you know, the only thing I could think of. It's a big picture of me having a kitchen. That would be it, I would be devastated. If I would lose that.
I know where I can get about 18 more copies of those. Right, yeah. Anything that's been, that would be destroyed, like, it's cool because the event that led to that is what matters, the actual keepsake. I've had to live in a place where I had to throw away most of what I own, just because I was moving into a smaller house, and then that really helped me get over any emotional attachment to items.
So, and even now in the house I live and I'm like, let's throw every, all the way, throw it all the way, shit. And then, Michelle's like, you can't throw Caleb out here. You can't throw him out. It's not from like a trying.
He's a good boy. I love it. All right, speaking of good boys. Where?
Have you got one? Yes. Come on, I'm a good boy. Indeed.
Oh, it's some rest of phones. Good boy old. Yeah, I did some research and he's got a topic. I did a lot of research.
It started out my topic. I wanted it to encompass this very broad subject. You want to talk about broads? Well, I always like to discuss broads.
But the topic became, as it would, cumbersome. I thought I had narrowed it down to a manageable amount of topics. And the subject I'm talking about is so incredibly vast. It's enormous.
But I'm going to start at the beginning and to Jeff's consternation. I'm going to talk about the birth and death of Atari. The Atari company here. Video games, Jeff.
Video games, Jeff. I'll go read a book and I'll head again. I'll head to the other hand. No.
See, even Jeff, who at one point had to drive 50 miles to a pizza hut to play Pac-Man, still played Pac-Man. Actually, we go 50 miles to go to Pizza Hut. Pac-Man was there. Pac-Man was there.
Of course it was. Pac-Man was everywhere. Here's also a field of ways. Yeah, and that happens in Colorado because it's weird.
The land is real weird that way. Yeah, well, it is a field of ways. That's a good way to look at it. Ups and downs.
So let's begin by talking about Ralph Bair's Magnavox Odyssey. That's where we're going to start. This is the Max Bear from the Beverly Hills. No, not Max Bear.
No, not Max Bear. He's a Max Bear. I know I did. He's Jeff.
He's generally a really hell of a lie. Professional boxer, Max Bear. No, these two guys are not related. Would you rather box Max Bear or an actual bear?
Probably Max Bear because he's dead. I think he did. I could be totally wrong on that. I think this is the Mandela effect.
I don't think it could be. I think you're thinking like, I think I could be dead. Get a box. It's like, I get good.
There are hundreds of people that I think died when they actually die. Oh, what the fuck? One of them you think is me. I don't believe that.
You think I'm just a big man? Let's talk about Ralph Bair's Magnavox Odyssey real quick. That was released in 1972. Good year.
Yes? The year before. Only one of them is that experience right here. This says, do you remember the system at all?
Do you remember commercials or anything for the Magnavox Odyssey? I do not. In 1972, I was seven and then I turned eight in October of that year. Yes.
You were a baby child who could have used Magnavox Odyssey. I would have enjoyed this. You absolutely would have sucked up my life and I would have been happy to do such. This is one that we're commercials for that was like the Magnavox Odyssey by Magnavox.
$50 rebate if purchased with a Magnavox television. That's how they talk about it. Oh, yeah. These announcer guys.
Today's how little charisma was necessary. Oh, yeah. You were selling it. It just had to be a beat.
It was like a G.G.N. The product sold more towards the meat bizzares. Yeah, that was pretty much it. The Magnavox Odyssey.
There's been nothing like that. Razzle Dazzle. So the honestly came with gaming cards that were inserted into a brown box. Was it cartridge or was it fitted?
No, no, no. It was a card. It was like a playing card. And plastic film overlays were placed onto the television screens.
The static electricity from it went. This card? Was it hole punched? Yeah.
It was like that. It was 72, man. Computers took up the size of a room. Right.
So this was like a box of cities. It was a card. It came with 13 cards, but it just needed one per game. And you would put a film overlay on your television set.
It would stick to it. And so between the little blips on the screen and the overlay on the television. Had your game? That's your game right there.
Why did you need the overlay? To be in the background or the setting. Like if you were playing tennis. Oh, it would be a net in the middle.
Oh, yeah. You basically put the net on the TV. Yeah, you put the net on the TV. Right.
You put like the background. So it was going to pong back and forth. It wasn't the graphics. Right.
No, no. It was a couple of blips on a screen and then the plastic overlay was $50. It's a people call on that. It was a television.
You have to go to the bed. Oh, okay. I can tell you right now. This is why we didn't have one when I was seven years old.
Well, this is why most people didn't have them. The cards would be switched when it was in and out. It did not sell very well at all. It's not because of the announcer.
Probably. I'm getting a magnabox, honestly. Good for families and funerals. So people were under the impression at the time that you could only play this brown box on a magnabox television.
Yeah. And they were like, I don't want to have it. Yeah, I don't want to have it. I don't have it on TV.
I'm not buying another TV for that. And of course they were sold primarily at the magnabox electronics store. Any kind of widespread exposure. Well, do you think they created the game to sell the game or something to drop people into buy the TV?
No. No. But I'm going to get to that. So you're saying it was a marketing device for the TV, not really for the game?
No, no, no. They were trying to sell the game because you could use it on any television. They were just, it was a very poor marketing decision. Yeah.
On their part. But that's not completely important. What's important is that the Odyssey was created by Ralph Bair who was born to a Jewish family in Germany in 1922. His family moved to New York City in 1938, which was two months prior to Kristolot.
Yeah. Yeah. He became a naturalized US citizen and then in 1943 was drafted to fight World War II. He came back from World War II in the 10th of the American Television Institute of Technology in Chicago in 1949.
And to us, that seems like this insanely long time ago, especially when you consider video games didn't really become popularized until the 70s. But among programmers and folks like that, they were starting to use that. In fact, and I mentioned it later, but I'll just mention it now. It was Alan Turing had created a chess game for the computer.
Alan Turing and David Champyrmone developed a chess computer game in 1950 but did not actually implement it into a computer system. We did an episode on Alan Turing. Alan Turing, yeah, I found that interesting. I found that quite interesting that Turing was one of the first ones to fiddle with artificial intelligence and using that for a chess game.
And if you've ever played battle chess, thank you Alan Turing. We have a lot to thank him for. I think we've ever used a computer. Thank you Alan Turing.
But you know, battle chess. So Bair had the idea for a video game console in 1951. Yeah. Which is 20 years before any kind of video game had been seen by a public.
So he was an employee at Laurel, an electronics company. And the company had no interest in developing games at that time that could be played on the television. The television was brand new at this point. And it was such a foreign concept to manipulate images on your screen.
That was unheard of. That was science fiction to most people in the 50s. So the idea was shelved to the back of his mind until 1966, where as an employee of Sanders Associates, he wrote a criminal center. Yeah, yeah, but not the chicken guy.
The other criminal center. The other criminal center. While he was there, he wrote a four page proposal on his video game system. And he actually convinced one of the supervisors to allow him to proceed with the idea of this system, this idea.
So he was given $2,500 in research and development money. He was given two Sanders engineers and the three of them developed the Brown Box system. So named because of the Brown packaging take to simulate wood grade. Wow.
And the box is ugly as hell. Sure it is. It did not help at all. But it's called the Brown Box.
And then of course Bair having invented this, looked for someone to market it and get it out there. It's been agreed among people that it was a few years before its time. I don't know if you're talking about that. Is that beautiful?
I've seen the things. Oh my God. Oh my God. Who wouldn't want that sitting on top of their television?
I'll say the word doesn't look too bad. It is. It is good for kids. No, it's not.
It's good for kids. But it's way in. Jared thinks it's an attractive looking box. The other two guys, I don't know which is which.
They think it's ugly. I think it's like something you'd see a pappy's garage and urge him to throw out. You'd be like, are you really going to use what is that good for? Absolutely nothing.
But say again. So he's looking for a company to market this. And one of the executives who had worked with Barrett Sanders had moved to the marketing department at Magnavox. Poor guy.
Because obviously they're marketing department. No, but they're marketing department really flopped on that. I don't know. I really feel like it was a solid effort by Magnavox.
Magnavox. You've been passionate about that. So he advocated for Bayer in the marketing of this Hong Kong console, which was known as the Magnavox Odyssey. Along with the Odyssey being poorly marketed in 1972, the thought of connecting a computerized system to your television seems such a foreign idea that the Odyssey just tanked.
Nobody was ready for it. How could you connect it anyway? At that time. Oh, man.
So did you do screws that you attached to the rabbit ears? Yeah. Did you ever have a guitar? You like that?
That's how it was. Yeah. You had to have a screwdriver back in the day. And you would unscrew these two screws.
There's a prongs. There was a table. No, it was the screw that was acting as the conduit there between that and the antenna. So dangerous.
No, it's crazy. What's dangerous is when you're having TV trouble during a storm and your dad has to go out like straighten the antenna. And our antenna was like 20 feet tall on the side of the house. That's crazy.
So yes. I will say we had rabbit ears when I was a kid. Like I know rabbit ears, but the idea of connecting anything that I just formed to me. Yeah, it's weird now.
Time. The idea of having to play came through that. Yeah. That's how you had to do it.
That's wild. Yeah. So it is important to note that one of the games that Bear had invented and included on the Magnavox Odyssey was called Ping Pong, which consisted of... It's a dumb name.
I know, right? I don't think it was something I'll catch on. It was a line separating the middle of the television screen with one line on the left as the left panel. And one on the right hand side.
That's just wrong. floating between them. It was before Pong. It was like Ping Pong.
Let me stop you there. I won't go back to the antenna thing. Okay. So are you supposed to attach the Magnavox, the Brown Box?
Yeah. To the truth. Can your TV antenna be attached at the same time or do you have to unattached that and reattach it every time you've done the game? None of the memory serves.
I think we had both them hooked up. The antenna and the Atari hooked up into the... So the prongs from the Atari wouldn't interfere with the TV signal coming in from the antenna? Not to my knowledge, but that was a long time ago.
I see it looked like... Well, that's so much more beautiful than the... It's better than the Brown Box. I mean, it's less.
It's less up. It's less up. It's less up. It's less up.
It looks like it's leading. Oh, which one? That's about 4, 1972. That's a nice.
It's very clean. It does look clean. I like the wood panel. So we're moving away from Magnavox.
Just... And we're going to talk about the early arcade presence. Okay. Because up until 1972, arcade's consisted of pinball machines, which were actually outlawed in New York from 1934 until the mid- Well, you've got trouble, right?
That's exactly right. You've got a pinball machine in New York City. That didn't come out right. Anyway, it was like pinball machine, ski ball, and mechanical novelty.
They were all machine mechanical. They were all machine mechanical. None of these were really computerized in the movie big, the Zoltar machine. That's what you would see.
You wish you had an arcade. I'd say that musical. I'd say that musical. I'd say some of it.
It's not that. Yeah, I was in high school. Yeah, I like it. Yeah, I like it.
So I'd mention that the general public was not used to the concept of video games. Because with the obviously, they're kind of being like, here, this is it. Video games. Change your life.
And that's not really how you should approach it. Video games had to be seen as a part of normal everyday life somewhat. If you offer something in the public and you play it and you enjoy it, you're more likely to take it home. Magnavox was like, take it home.
Play it. Take this boring and boring and you know. No, no, no, no, no. And so, video games were not mainstream at the time, but they weren't ridiculously foreign.
The first video game, as we know it now, was introduced in 1966 when the Sega company introduced an electro mechanical game called Periscope. Have you ever seen one of these? It's like a lad of hell of a... It looks like a Periscope on the machine and you look through it.
And there's like lines in there. It's a game about sinking other submarines. It's a submarine simulator with a light gun shooter that simulated the sinking of other submarines. And the cost of that game in 1966 was a quarter.
And that became the standard cost of all video games for the next 20 years. So it was arcade that had to take home game? Yeah, that was all the arcade. For a quarter, you could take this off.
Wait, wait, wait. Wait, wait. No, it was set in the arcades. It was a really cool kind of game.
The graphics done. Do you have an arcade that you had to tune your kid? Oh, yes. Yes, I have three.
Yeah, there was one here in E-town near where the Asian food market is now. Oh, yeah. There was one, there's a church where a family bow-eared world was. And that was my favorite place in the world.
I can picture it now. I could tell you the exact layout of the place. I had one of my birthdays there, my best birthday. That was really...
That was really... Southern Indiana and Clark's Ball, River Falls Mall. It has since become a Bass Pro shop. The bottom floor was stores and one.
I never was getting there with Dick's board and go to Walmart. The Walmart was its own thing. Yeah, yeah. To his rust.
But the upstairs had a food court, movie theater, like a 918-hole puppet course. Nice. And then a huge arcade in my dad would go there all the time. If you were to ask me instead of what do you own, it would be family bow-eared world and Opry Land in Nashville.
Those two things I would save from having ever changed when I was a kid. So I could still go to family bow-eared world and play the same video games I played when I was a kid. These were great games. We'll get to it, but you know, you'd walk in, see Frogger.
Frogger there, you'd hear the sounds of Pat Mann and Donkey Kong and all these games. Very noisy places. It's just magical, goddamn magical. So around that time other games were released like Crown Soccer released by Taito in 1967.
Duck Hunt in 1969. Killer Shark in 1972, which you can see that in the movie Jaws from 1975. There's an arcade shop where they're playing Shark Attack where they're killing a shark. Good on you.
It's Spielberg for Batman in there. And Wild Gunman in 1974. However, in 1972, the same year that the Odyssey is released, a young electrical engineer named Nolan Bushnell under the banner of his new company Atari released an arcade game by the name of Pong. Oh, look at that.
Oh, yeah. I think it'll fly. Nolan Bushnell, by the way, there's like Alters to him. Like he's the guy.
Shrines. There's Shrines. Nolan Bushnell first attempted success. Wait, let me stop myself right there.
I've got it. I didn't write this down. I don't know what it means. It was Nolan Bushnell and I don't think it was Ted Dabney.
That was his first part. I can't remember his second one. But they named their company after the word Atari, which was Nolan Bushnell's favorite Japanese card game. I don't even know if it's a card game.
It's not a game to wear it. If you're about to take your opponents piece or your opponents piece as threatened, you would say Atari as a warning. It's like Uno or Chemo. One of those kind of things.
So it's not a Japanese company? No. No. I always thought it was a Japanese company.
No, not at all. No. It was a neat company under Nolan Bushnell when he started it. In 1969, he and a guy by the name of Ted Dabney formed a company called Scisigy.
Oh, I love that word. That's why ZYG was through the last three lives. That's it. Scisigy.
They had developed a game called Computer Space, which was a version of the game Space War. Space War was created in 1962. Oh, yeah. Yeah.
That one. The computer programmers played that together on the ARP system, the government internet back in the day. So it had spread in popularity, the space war between those guys. But when Nolan Bushnell did his version of it, it was a commercial failure.
It didn't do well at all. Again, programmers and the only ones really seen the benefit of video games at this point. So any marketing of it has failed thus far. And it sounds like a neat kind of game.
You've got a needle on one side and a wedge on the other and they shoot at each other. And in the middle of it, there's this gravitational like black hole that if you get too close, it'll start to suck your ship in. And that will have influenced a later video game that I'll talk about. But in 1972, Bushnell had attended a demonstration of the Magnavox Odyssey where he first saw the game ping pong in action.
So he recruited another engineer by the name of AJ Alcorn, or no, I'm sorry, Al Alcorn, by telling him he had a deal with General Electric, which was not true at the time. Alcorn has he was working though and he never once thought, wow, GE hasn't visited or called, or there's been no letters or anything. He didn't, he was just working, he didn't think about it. But he was getting paid though.
He was getting paid, yeah. Bushnell had a big old wad of $500 to start off with to help him create the version of ping pong named pong. Alcorn and Bushnell installed their pong machine at Andy Capstavren, which was a local bar in California. Al and Nolan sat at the bar waiting for someone to approach the machine and of course somebody eventually did as they played the game after putting a quarter into the exterior coin slot.
They took a coin slot from one of those little horsey rides you have outside of the hardware store. And that's how they hooked up the change machine to their pong device. And so a crowd started to gather around these guys and Alan, Nolan said, well, great. There's some interest, let's go on home.
Later on that night or the next morning Alcorn received a call from the owner of Andy Capstavren and said that their machine had been broken down. It wasn't playing anymore. So Alcorn headed to the bar to find out what was wrong with the machine. He opened the cabinet and quarters began cascading out of the machine.
And that's why it wouldn't work. It had clogged the machine up so that nobody could play it. And that's when they realized pong was a big old deal. Yeah, in that little salary.
So in 1974 Atari decided to follow Magnavox's lead and released the pong home console through a deal with Sears department stores. The first year pong was available to consumers for home use. They sold 150,000 units. So it seemed like people had begun to trust video games a little further at this point.
And so the home console as we now know it was officially born out of pong there. Where am I? The home console as we know is somewhat argued that the Odyssey was the original birth of home consoles and that's a valid point. But it was the home version of pong.
That was the first time that the average consumer really latched onto any idea about the games into their homes at that point. So yay, Bushnell. You did it. Yeah, exactly.
You're on the UK. However, Ralph Baer heard about this new pong system. Pong? And so yeah, he was like, what is this pong?
It looks very familiar. So he and Magnavox filed a lawsuit against Atari for patent infringement. Bushnell's kind of fair. Oh yeah, I mean, it's a legitimate thing.
Especially because Bushnell admitted openly that he attended the trade show. His name is on a register. And he felt that ping pong was not a very clever game as it was presented at this trade show. So Bushnell's lawyer assured him that they could definitely win the case despite his name having appeared on this registry.