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micksensei favorited a video
(2 days ago)
Emile Hirsch promoting "Into The Wild" in Japan.(June 2008)
+interview with Sean Penn
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micksensei favorited a video
(3 days ago)
Nolan Bushnell Profile:
Nolan K. Bushnell (born February 5, 1943) is an American electrical engineer and entrepreneur who founded both Atari, Inc an...
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Nolan Bushnell Profile:
Nolan K. Bushnell (born February 5, 1943) is an American electrical engineer and entrepreneur who founded both Atari, Inc and the Chuck E. Cheese's Pizza-Time Theaters chain. Bushnell is one of the founding fathers of the video game industry.
Bushnell graduated from the University of Utah electrical engineering program in 1968 after he had transferred from Utah State University to University of Utah, and was a member of the Pi Kappa Alpha Fraternity. He was one of many computer science students of the 1960s who played the historic Spacewar! game on DEC mainframe computers. The University of Utah was heavily involved in computer graphics research, and spawned a wide variety of Spacewar versions.
Bushnell worked at Lagoon Amusement Park for many years while in high school and college in his hometown of Clearfield, Utah. He was particularly interested in the midway arcade games, where theme park customers would have to use skill and luck to ultimately achieve the goal and win the prize. He enjoyed the concept of getting people curious in the game, and from there getting them to pay the fee in order to play the game. He would use his love for games and theme parks to help launch both Atari and Chuck E. Cheese's Pizza-Time Theaters.
After selling Atari to Warner Communications for $28 million, Bushnell purchased the former mansion of coffee magnate James Folger in Woodside, California, which he shared with his wife Nancy and their many children. The Bushnells now live in Southern California.
In order to keep the company alive while the machine was being prototyped, the two took on a route servicing broken pinball machines. Dabney built the prototype and Bushnell shopped it around, looking for a manufacturer. They made an agreement with Nutting Associates, a maker of coin-op trivia and shooting games, who produced a fiberglass cabinet for the unit that included a coin-slot mechanism.
Computer Space was a commercial failure, though sales exceeded $3 million. Bushnell felt that Nutting Associates had not marketed the game well, and decided that his next game would be licensed to a bigger manufacturer.
In 1972, Bushnell and Dabney set off on their own, and incorporated under the name Atari.After Bushnell attended a Burlingame, California demonstration of the Magnavox Odyssey, he gave the task of making the Magnavox tennis game into a coin-op version to Alcorn as a test project. Alcorn incorporated many of his own improvements into the game design, such as scoring and sound, and Pong was born. Pong proved to be very popular; Atari released a large number of Pong-based arcade games over the next few years as the mainstay of the company.
In 1974, Atari entered the consumer electronics market after engineers Harold Lee and Bob Brown approached Alcorn with an idea to develop a home version of Pong. With a marketing and distribution agreement with Sears, Pong sales soared when the unit was released in 1975.
Using borrowed parts from Atari, having the main PCB printed up by Atari employee Howard Cantin, and receiving further assistance from Atari employee Ron Wayne[, two non-employees, Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak, created and marketed their own home computer. They offered the design to Bushnell, but Atari had no desire to build computers at the time, instead focusing on the arcade and home console markets.
By 1976 Atari was in the midst of developing the Atari VCS (Video Computer System, later renamed the Atari 2600), but Bushnell realized that if the company was going to grow, it needed capital, and with the stock market in a bleak condition, going public would not be the solution. He made a list of companies to approach to buy Atari. Meanwhile, Steve Ross, CEO of Warner Communications, noticed that his children were hovering around video game cabinets at Walt Disney World. Warner Communications contacted Atari to discuss purchasing the company. For $28 million, Warner Communications (now Time Warner) bought Atari, bringing the capital they needed for the VCS launch, which took place in August 1977.
In November 1978, Bushnell was forced out of the company after a dispute with Warner over its future direction, notably on the lifespan of the Atari 2600 and their closed software strategy, which was later changed — for the new home computer division.
By 1982, Atari had US$2 billion in annual sales and was "the fastest-growing company in the history of American business" (Cohen). By 1984, the company had crashed and was split in to three pieces to be sold off. The coin-op division became Atari Games, the Consumer division was sold to Jack Tramiel who folded it in to his Tramel Technology, Ltd., which was then renamed Atari Corporation. The budding Ataritel division was sold to Mitsubishi Electric.
URL: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nolan_Bu...
http://www.atari2600.com/
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micksensei favorited a video
(3 days ago)
Nolan Bushnell Profile:
Nolan K. Bushnell (born February 5, 1943) is an American electrical engineer and entrepreneur who founded both Atari, Inc an...
more
Nolan Bushnell Profile:
Nolan K. Bushnell (born February 5, 1943) is an American electrical engineer and entrepreneur who founded both Atari, Inc and the Chuck E. Cheese's Pizza-Time Theaters chain. Bushnell is one of the founding fathers of the video game industry.
Bushnell graduated from the University of Utah electrical engineering program in 1968 after he had transferred from Utah State University to University of Utah, and was a member of the Pi Kappa Alpha Fraternity. He was one of many computer science students of the 1960s who played the historic Spacewar! game on DEC mainframe computers. The University of Utah was heavily involved in computer graphics research, and spawned a wide variety of Spacewar versions.
Bushnell worked at Lagoon Amusement Park for many years while in high school and college in his hometown of Clearfield, Utah. He was particularly interested in the midway arcade games, where theme park customers would have to use skill and luck to ultimately achieve the goal and win the prize. He enjoyed the concept of getting people curious in the game, and from there getting them to pay the fee in order to play the game. He would use his love for games and theme parks to help launch both Atari and Chuck E. Cheese's Pizza-Time Theaters.
After selling Atari to Warner Communications for $28 million, Bushnell purchased the former mansion of coffee magnate James Folger in Woodside, California, which he shared with his wife Nancy and their many children. The Bushnells now live in Southern California.
In order to keep the company alive while the machine was being prototyped, the two took on a route servicing broken pinball machines. Dabney built the prototype and Bushnell shopped it around, looking for a manufacturer. They made an agreement with Nutting Associates, a maker of coin-op trivia and shooting games, who produced a fiberglass cabinet for the unit that included a coin-slot mechanism.
Computer Space was a commercial failure, though sales exceeded $3 million. Bushnell felt that Nutting Associates had not marketed the game well, and decided that his next game would be licensed to a bigger manufacturer.
In 1972, Bushnell and Dabney set off on their own, and incorporated under the name Atari.After Bushnell attended a Burlingame, California demonstration of the Magnavox Odyssey, he gave the task of making the Magnavox tennis game into a coin-op version to Alcorn as a test project. Alcorn incorporated many of his own improvements into the game design, such as scoring and sound, and Pong was born. Pong proved to be very popular; Atari released a large number of Pong-based arcade games over the next few years as the mainstay of the company.
In 1974, Atari entered the consumer electronics market after engineers Harold Lee and Bob Brown approached Alcorn with an idea to develop a home version of Pong. With a marketing and distribution agreement with Sears, Pong sales soared when the unit was released in 1975.
Using borrowed parts from Atari, having the main PCB printed up by Atari employee Howard Cantin, and receiving further assistance from Atari employee Ron Wayne[, two non-employees, Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak, created and marketed their own home computer. They offered the design to Bushnell, but Atari had no desire to build computers at the time, instead focusing on the arcade and home console markets.
By 1976 Atari was in the midst of developing the Atari VCS (Video Computer System, later renamed the Atari 2600), but Bushnell realized that if the company was going to grow, it needed capital, and with the stock market in a bleak condition, going public would not be the solution. He made a list of companies to approach to buy Atari. Meanwhile, Steve Ross, CEO of Warner Communications, noticed that his children were hovering around video game cabinets at Walt Disney World. Warner Communications contacted Atari to discuss purchasing the company. For $28 million, Warner Communications (now Time Warner) bought Atari, bringing the capital they needed for the VCS launch, which took place in August 1977.
In November 1978, Bushnell was forced out of the company after a dispute with Warner over its future direction, notably on the lifespan of the Atari 2600 and their closed software strategy, which was later changed — for the new home computer division.
By 1982, Atari had US$2 billion in annual sales and was "the fastest-growing company in the history of American business" (Cohen). By 1984, the company had crashed and was split in to three pieces to be sold off. The coin-op division became Atari Games, the Consumer division was sold to Jack Tramiel who folded it in to his Tramel Technology, Ltd., which was then renamed Atari Corporation. The budding Ataritel division was sold to Mitsubishi Electric.
URL: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nolan_Bu...
http://www.atari2600.com/
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micksensei favorited a video
(1 week ago)
The CN Tower is considered one of the Seven Wonders of the Modern World, and is the most popular tourist attraction in Toronto, Ontario.
Join Chief ...
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The CN Tower is considered one of the Seven Wonders of the Modern World, and is the most popular tourist attraction in Toronto, Ontario.
Join Chief Operating Officer, Jack Robinson as he explores the history of the tower and provides a look into the feature attractions for those who may be planning to visit in the near future.
Want to plan your trip to Canada? Visit http://www.canada.travel
Find out what type of traveller you are: http://www.canada.travel/travellertypes. For participants in the UK, you also stand a chance to win a trip to Canada!
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micksensei favorited a video
(2 weeks ago)
Filmmaker Richard Lucchesi, a Kyung Hee University English Professor wanted to know more about the Su-neung (수능), a test that everyone in Korea kno...
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Filmmaker Richard Lucchesi, a Kyung Hee University English Professor wanted to know more about the Su-neung (수능), a test that everyone in Korea knows about, and that virtually all high school students have taken since 1993. It's a university entrance exam, and is still the most common way to enter university in Korea. Offered once a year in November, as many as 600,000 high school seniors students sit for the exam each year. They traveled the streets of Seoul speaking to its residents about their experiences. This film is dedicated to the millions of people who have studied for and taken the Su-neung (수능) university entrance exam in Korea, and for those who have yet to do so.
Music used with permission from Chul Hee Lee.
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