Ted Dabney Ted Dabney Samuel Frederick "Ted" Dabney Jr. (May 2, 1937 – May 26, 2018) was an American electrical engineer, and the co-founder, alongside Nolan Bushnell, of Atari, Inc. He is recognized as developing the basics of video circuitry principles that were used for "Computer Space" and later "Pong", one of the first and most successful arcade games. Dabney was born in San Francisco, California to Irma and Samuel Frederick Dabney. His parents divorced while he was young and subsequently raised by his father. One of several schools that he attended was John A. O'Connell High School of Technology, where he
Nolan Bushnell California, contracted with Bally Manufacturing to create a driving game, and hired their second employee, engineer Allan Alcorn. Bushnell later bought out Dabney, who was forced out after Nolan told him he would transfer all the assets to another corporation and leave Ted with nothing. After Bushnell attended a Burlingame, California demonstration of the Magnavox Odyssey, he gave the task of making the Magnavox tennis game into a coin-op version to Alcorn as a test project. He told Alcorn that he was making the game for General Electric, in order to motivate him, but in actuality he planned to simply