Original battery-powered prototype of an Atari 'Home Pong' unit built with an early prototype circuit board and an early prototype Pong chip, measuring 10.75" x 8" x 4", housed in a wooden case with translucent acrylic bottom panel. On top are an "off/on" switch, "start" button," two potentiometer paddle control knobs, and a metal grille for its built-in speaker. The housing is crafted from black melamine/MDF panels with solid wood sides and plastic bottom, and has a single video output cable terminating in an RCA connector. Fabricated by Atari's design group after receiving a large purchase order from Sears, this alternative wooden case was designed to be easily and quickly mass-produced so that the contract could be fulfilled on time. In the end, the plastic case was ready and this simplified rectangular model never reached production. To Alcorn's knowledge, this was the only Pong prototype built in this configuration.
Accompanied by a letter of provenance signed by Alcorn, discussing the initial success of the Pong arcade game and Atari's efforts to create a commercial, consumer version of the game-which hinged upon the production of a small, affordable chip to replace the expensive hard-wired PCBs of the arcade version. As it turned out, the fabrication of a functional chip was 'easy'-it was getting an injection molded plastic case for the system that was the main challenge in putting Pong in homes across America.
Alcorn writes, in full: "We started Atari in 1972 as an arcade game manufacturer and I designed our first video game called Pong. Soon we had become very successful in the coin operated arcade business but Nolan had much higher ambitions. He wanted to build a home version of Pong that was very inexpensive so we could sell millions of them. The only way we could do this was to put all the circuitry on a single silicon chip that we could buy for less than $10 because the arcade game had about $100 worth of components in it and was unsuitable for mass production. Unfortunately, I had never designed a custom chip but Nolan insisted. Harold Lee was an engineer that worked for me designing coin operated games and he told me that he could use his previous experience at a semiconductor company to perhaps put the entire Pong game on a single chip. This sounded like fun so I put a small team together and in about six months we had a design. We convinced a local semiconductor company, American Microsystems Inc. (AMI), to build a prototype chip for us. Much to my surprise and delight the chip worked.
Now that we had a working prototype we had to figure out where we were going to sell it. Our marketing man called Sears in Chicago and we were very lucky to got ahold of the one man at Sears that understood what a home version of Pong meant, Tom Quinn. Sears was selling the Magnavox odyssey game but Magnavox would only let him sell it in the catalogs and were not allowed show it in the stores; they thought it might compete with their dealers. Tom came out to see us a few days after our call and was astonished at the youth of our company but he saw the value in this product and eventually ordered close to 1 million units.
Unfortunately I underestimated the difficulty in getting an injection molded plastic case into production. It turned out to take longer than designing the chip and cost more money to get into production. We now had over 100,000 of them sold to Sears but had no plastic case to put it in. Nolan wanted me to design an alternative package that might cost more but it could be built in time to fulfill the Sear's contract. I told Nolan that if I tried to get the plastic case and an alternative wooden case designed I would probably screw up both of them. So then Nolan commissioned our design group to design a wooden prototype case very quickly and this is the only one made to my knowledge. It has an early prototype circuit board and an early prototype Pong chip in it."
From the collection of Pong creator Allan Alcorn.
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