Ted Dabney game. As "Pong" became successful, Dabney felt overshadowed by both Bushnell and Alcorn. He learned that Bushnell had patented his video circuit idea without including Dabney on the patent. Bushnell also had assigned Dabney a lower-level position in Atari and did not include him in high-level meetings. Around March 1973, Dabney left the company over this falling out, selling his portion of the company's ownership for . Dabney did continue to help Bushnell with starting his Pizza Time Theater (the predecessor of Chuck E. Cheese's) and Catalyst Technologies as an employee, being wary of Bushnell's previous treatment of him. Alongside
Ted Dabney studied trade drafting, which led to him getting a job with the California Department of Transportation while still a teenager. He eventually got his high school diploma from San Mateo High School; Dabney credited a math teacher named Walker there that got him interested in the electronics and computing areas. He then had a summer position with a local surveyor company, but when the work dried up by the winter, he was let go, and he enlisted in the United States Marine Corps. Within his three years of the Corps he took courses on electronics, giving him an interest in