Pong launches the video-game industry
1972 · Event
Atari installs a coin-operated cabinet with two paddles and a square ball in a California bar; within days it breaks down because the coin bucket is jammed full of quarters. Pong is the first commercially successful video game — the seed of an industry that now out-earns films and music combined.
On these timelines: The Digital Revolution, Master, Science & Technology, USA
More from The Digital Revolution
- Invention of the World Wide Web (1989)
- Google founded (1998)
- Turing's On Computable Numbers (1936)
- First website goes online (1990)
- Moore's Law formulated (1965)
- Mosaic makes the web visual (1993)
- Turing's Computing Machinery and Intelligence (1950)
- Netscape founded (1994)
Around 1972
- Prague Spring (1968)
- The Troubles (1968)
- Apollo 11 moon landing (1969)
- Iranian Revolution (1978)
- Cuban Missile Crisis (1962)
- Vietnam War (American phase) (1965)
- Watergate scandal (1972)
- Six-Day War (1967)
- Yom Kippur War (1973)
- Birth of hip-hop (1973)