Atari Introduces Pong

November 29, 1972

Atari introduces their first product, Pong, which would become the world’s first commercially successful video game. The story goes that Atari’s founder Nolan Bushnell installed the game at Andy Capp’s Tavern in Sunnyvale California on this day. Soon they were called by the bar owner complaining that the game stopped working. Upon investigating the problem, they found that the game was jammed with quarters. At least that is the legend but regardless there were 10,000 machines installed within 4 months.

The popularity of Pong sparked the beginning of the video game industry with Atari being the leader in both arcade and home video gaming through the early 1980’s.