Atari's Pong overflows its coin box
A malfunction report turns out to be a bar game jammed full of quarters
Quick facts
- Founders
- Nolan Bushnell, Ted Dabney, Al Alcorn
- Designer
- Al Alcorn
- First location
- Andy Capp's Tavern, Sunnyvale, California
- Announced
- 29 November 1972
What happened
Nolan Bushnell, Ted Dabney, and engineer Al Alcorn, all former Ampex employees, founded Atari and built Pong, an analog table-tennis game with two paddles and a bouncing square 'ball,' as the company's first project. Alcorn housed the prototype in a wooden cabinet with a cheap black-and-white television for a screen and installed it at Andy Capp's Tavern in Sunnyvale, California. Within days the bar's owner reported the machine had stopped working; when Alcorn opened it, he found no fault at all, only a coin box so packed with quarters it could not physically accept more. Atari announced Pong on 29 November 1972 and went on to sell tens of thousands of arcade units, followed by a home version through Sears in 1975.
Why it matters
The overflowing coin box convinced Bushnell there was a much bigger market than a handful of bars, and Pong's runaway popularity launched the coin-operated arcade boom of the 1970s, establishing Atari as the first major video game company.
How we know
The Computer History Museum holds Alcorn's original 1972 Pong prototype in its permanent collection and published its own institutional history of the design and the Andy Capp's Tavern incident, quoting Alcorn directly.
Sources
- Computer History Museum. 50 Years of Fun with Pong · Primary source (author-declared)computerhistory.org · Cited as a "primary" source (no stronger domain match). · Link is live and its text matches the event's key terms (Jul 2026)
- The Strong National Museum of Play (World Video Game Hall of Fame). Pong · Reputable sourcemuseumofplay.org · The domain "museumofplay.org" is on our Reputable source registry. · Link is live and its text matches the event's key terms (Jul 2026)
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