Figures

Nolan Bushnell

Video Game Pioneer

Citation Formats

General Reference

Film and Media Atlas. "Nolan Bushnell." Accessed August 30, 2026. https://dev-media.interactiveatlas.org/figures/nolan-bushnell.

APA Style

Film and Media Atlas. (n.d.). Nolan Bushnell. Retrieved August 30, 2026, from https://dev-media.interactiveatlas.org/figures/nolan-bushnell

BibTeX

@misc{filmandmediaatlas-nolan-bushnell,
  author = {Film and Media Atlas},
  title = {Nolan Bushnell},
  year = {2026},
  url = {https://dev-media.interactiveatlas.org/figures/nolan-bushnell},
  note = {Accessed August 30, 2026}
}

An American engineer and entrepreneur who co-founded Atari, Inc. with Ted Dabney on June 27, 1972, in Sunnyvale, California. After seeing the Magnavox Odyssey demonstrated in May 1972, Bushnell assigned engineer Allan Alcorn to build a table-tennis arcade game at his direction; the result, Pong, released later that year, became the first commercially successful video game and helped establish the video game industry as a viable business.

Facts

Nationality

American 1

Defining Contribution

Co-founded Atari, Inc. in 1972 and directed the creation of Pong, the arcade game that made the video game industry commercially viable. 1

Cross-Tradition Connections