Atari 2600 of 2004. Atari was founded by Nolan Bushnell and Ted Dabney of which their first major product was "Pong" in 1972, one of the first successful arcade games. It transitioned "Pong" into a home console version by 1975, helping to pit Atari against Magnavox, the only other major competitor for home consoles at the time. Bushnell recognized that this approach to home consoles has a drawback in that because it used custom logic burned onto the circuit board, it was limited to only one game and any variants, and would require consumers to buy another console to play a different
Ted Dabney their military products section. This work led to him becoming involved in early video imagery products within Ampex, including vidicon systems. By around 1969 Ampex had also hired Nolan Bushnell, who worked alongside Dabney and where they became friends. Bushnell, prior to joining Ampex, had come up with the idea of making a carnival-like pizza place with animatronics and games, and discussed this idea with Dabney. After seeing a computer system at the Stanford Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, the two came up with the concept of using a smaller computer or video systems, adding coin slots, and allowing people to pay