Title
Alcorn, Al (Allan) oral history
Catalog Number
102658257
Type
Document
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.
Date
2008-04-26; 2008-05-23
Contributor
|
Alcorn, Al, Interviewee
|
|
Lowood, Henry, Interviewer
|
Publisher
Computer History Museum
Place of Publication
Mountain View, CA, USA
Extent
58 p.
Category
Transcription
Subject
Alcorn, Allan; Bushnell, Nolan; Atari; Pong; Apple Computer, Inc.; Interval Research; Cumma; Silicon Gaming
Collection Title
Oral history collection
