Nolan Bushnell dispose of the game. Alcorn incorporated many of his own improvements into the game design, such as the ball speeding up the longer the game went on, and "Pong" was born. "Pong" proved to be very popular; Atari released a large number of "Pong"-based arcade games over the next few years as the mainstay of the company. In 1974, Atari entered the consumer electronics market after engineers Harold Lee and Bob Brown approached Alcorn with an idea to develop a home version of "Pong". With a marketing and distribution agreement with Sears, "Pong" sales soared when the unit was released
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