Arcade game Invaders", however, dealt a yet more powerful blow to the popularity of electro-mechanical games. In 1971 students at Stanford University set up the "Galaxy Game", a coin-operated version of the Spacewar video game. This ranks as the earliest known instance of a coin-operated video game. Later in the same year, Nolan Bushnell created the first mass-manufactured game, "Computer Space", for Nutting Associates. In 1972, Atari was formed by Nolan Bushnell and Ted Dabney. Atari essentially created the coin-operated video game industry with the game "Pong", the first successful electronic ping pong video game. "Pong" proved to be popular, but imitators
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