Nolan Bushnell not marketed the game well, and decided that his next game would be licensed to a bigger manufacturer. In 1972, Bushnell and Dabney set off on their own, and learned that the name "Syzygy" was in use; Bushnell has said at different times that it was in use by a candle company owned by a Mendocino hippie commune and by a roofing company. They instead incorporated under the name Atari, a reference to a check-like position in the game Go (which Bushnell has called his "favorite game of all time"). They rented their first office on Scott Boulevard in Sunnyvale,
David P. Bushnell David P. Bushnell David Pearsall Bushnell (1913 - 2005) was an American entrepreneur who founded the Bushnell optics company in 1948. Bushnell made precision binoculars affordable to middle-class Americans for the first time through a strategy of importing from manufacturers who provided optics to his patented specifications. Bushnell was born in Saint Paul, Minnesota on March 31, 1913 and raised in Los Angeles, California. From 1930 to 1933, he studied engineering at California Institute of Technology, paying for his tuition by selling newspapers. He then dropped out to travel around the world. Bushnell returned after 8 months and attended the