Details

Type

Text

Title

Alcorn, Al (Allan) oral history

Contributor

Alcorn, Al, Interviewee

Lowood, Henry, Interviewer

Publisher

Computer History Museum

Date

2008-04-26; 2008-05-23

Place of Publication

Mountain View, California

Extent

58 p.

Description

In this interview with Henry Lowood, Allan “Al” Alcorn reviews his career as an electrical engineer, game designer, computer industry executive, and entrepreneur. Alcorn studied electrical engineering and computer science at the University of California, Berkeley. He worked as a co-op student and, after his graduation in 1971, as an employee at Ampex Corporation, refining his skills in video and analog engineering. In 1972, he left Ampex to join Nolan Bushnell and Ted Dabney (also ex-Ampex employees) at Atari. Busy with the two-player version of Computer Space, Bushnell assigned Alcorn the task of designing a simple home-consumer game based on Ping-Pong. This became Atari’s first game, the arcade hit Pong. Alcorn recounts his work at Atari through his departure in 1981. He also describes his motivations, work and experiences at Apple Computer and through a number of startups in various technical fields, including video encoding, multimedia, electronic gaming and other areas.

Category

Transcription

Subject

Alcorn, Allan; Bushnell, Nolan; Atari; Pong; Apple Computer, Inc.; Interval Research; Cumma; Silicon Gaming

Collection Title

Oral Histories Online

Accession Number

102658257