Fantastic prototype of the 'Home Pong' chip wafer given to Pong creator Allan Alcorn by members of the design team as a memento of their work to reduce the hard-wired, arcade cabinet version of the video game to a smaller, affordable single chip for consumer-level use at home. Originating from the prototype run, the 3-inch silicon wafer contains dozens of Pong chips-examined under a microscope, the Atari logo is visible. These are N-channel, enhancement mode, CMOS chips that run at 3 ½ MHz. Mounted and framed to an overall size of 6.5 x 6.5. In fine condition.
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. In part: "We started Atari in 1972 as an arcade game manufacturer and I designed our first video game called Pong. Within the first year we became a dominant arcade game manufacturer and realize that the coin operated arcade business was only so big but to truly profit from video games we needed to have something we could sell to the home. 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. 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 to perhaps put the entire Pong game on a single chip. This sounded like fun so I put a small team together that that included myself, Harold in my wife and in about six months we had a design. We convinced a local semiconductor company call 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 got ahold of the one man at Sears that understood what a home version of pond meant, Tom Quinn. He was selling the Magnavox Odyssey game but only in the catalog because Magnavox wouldn't let them sell it in the store. He 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."
From the collection of Pong creator Allan Alcorn.
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