Atari, Inc. Atari, Inc. Atari, Inc. was an American video game developer and home computer company founded in 1972 by Nolan Bushnell and Ted Dabney. Primarily responsible for the formation of the video arcade and modern video game industries, the company was closed and its assets split in 1984 as a direct result of the North American video game crash of 1983. In 1966, Nolan Bushnell saw "Spacewar!" for the first time at the University of Utah. By 1968, Bushnell had become an employee of Ampex in San Francisco, and worked alongside Ted Dabney. The two found they had shared interests, including
David P. Bushnell David P. Bushnell David Pearsall Bushnell (1913 - 2005) was an American entrepreneur who founded the Bushnell optics company in 1948. Bushnell made precision binoculars affordable to middle-class Americans for the first time through a strategy of importing from manufacturers who provided optics to his patented specifications. Bushnell was born in Saint Paul, Minnesota on March 31, 1913 and raised in Los Angeles, California. From 1930 to 1933, he studied engineering at California Institute of Technology, paying for his tuition by selling newspapers. He then dropped out to travel around the world. Bushnell returned after 8 months and attended the