Atari, Inc. Atari, Inc. Atari, Inc. was an American video game developer and home computer company founded in 1972 by Nolan Bushnell and Ted Dabney. Primarily responsible for the formation of the video arcade and modern video game industries, the company was closed and its assets split in 1984 as a direct result of the North American video game crash of 1983. In 1966, Nolan Bushnell saw "Spacewar!" for the first time at the University of Utah. By 1968, Bushnell had become an employee of Ampex in San Francisco, and worked alongside Ted Dabney. The two found they had shared interests, including
David P. Bushnell a vice-president of B&L. The company was renamed to Bushnell Performance Optics by B&L. In 2005, Bushnell died of non-Hodgkins lymphoma at his home in Laguna Beach, California, a week before his 92nd birthday. Bushnell's first wife, Frances Elizabeth Krug, died in 1947. His second marriage, to Nina Gmirkin ended in divorce. Bushnell was survived by his third wife, Nancy. He had two sons, David Alan Bushnell and Steven Ensign Bushnell, and two daughters, Natasha Bushnell Suter and Jean Bushnell Salfen. David P. Bushnell David Pearsall Bushnell (1913 - 2005) was an American entrepreneur who founded the Bushnell optics company