The one-off system options paddle management knobs, a brilliant purple “begin sport” button, a steel grille for its built-in speaker, and a completed Pong chip in a prototype circuit board. It’s one among solely two prototypes constructed by Atari.
The prototype comes from the gathering of Allan Alcorn — the landmark sport’s creator and former mentor to Steve Jobs.
Atari launched the desk tennis-themed arcade sport in 1972. It wasn’t till a number of years later that it launched a house system, creating the marketplace for residence online game consoles.
In a letter of provenance written and signed by Alcorn himself, he explains why the “Residence Pong” prototype was created.
“In 1975, Atari had managed to develop into dominant within the coin-operated leisure enterprise and moved on to construct video video games for the house market,” he mentioned. “We needed to get Pong operating on a single chip of silicon so a product may very well be constructed at a value a shopper might afford.” Whereas his group labored out the main points on easy methods to construct a working residence system from plastic, he used a hand-crafted wood mock-up to reveal it for purchasers.