Nolan Bushnell

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Nolan Bushnell
Born February 5, 1943 (1943-02-05) (age 65)
Clearfield, Utah
Occupation Electrical engineer and entrepreneur

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 has received a great deal of recognition, including being inducted into the Video Game Hall of Fame and the Consumer Electronics Association Hall of Fame, receiving the Nations Restaurant News “Innovator of the Year” award, and being named one of Newsweek's "50 Men That Changed America." Bushnell has started more than twenty companies and is widely recognized as one of the founding fathers of the video game industry. He is currently the founder and CEO of uWink, a game-based restaurant startup, and the Chairman of the board at NeoEdge Networks, an advertising-based video game company.


Contents

[edit] Personal life

Bushnell graduated from the University of Utah electrical engineering program in 1968, 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 Salt Lake City, 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 US$28,000,000, 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 estate overlooked, among other things, the house of former Bushnell employee and Apple Computer CEO Steve Jobs. The Bushnells now live in Southern California.

Bushnell's oldest child Alissa currently works with Nolan at uWink.

Bushnell was raised as a Latter-Day Saint but is no longer an active member.[1]

In June 2008 a new film was announced in which Leonardo DiCaprio would portray Bushnell. [2]

[edit] Entrepreneurship

[edit] Syzygy

In 1971, Bushnell and colleague Ted Dabney formed Syzygy with the intention of producing a Spacewar clone known as Computer Space. The “counter slip” state machine technology which drove Computer Space was later patented and served as the core technology for all arcade video games until 1975 when microprocessors appeared on the scene and soon became the technology of choice.

In order to keep the company alive while the machine was being prototyped, they also took on a route servicing broken pinball machines. Ted Dabney built the Computer Space prototype and Nolan Bushnell started to shop it around, looking for a manufacturer. They eventually reached 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[3] [4] [5].

Computer Space proved to be a commercial failure. Though Computer Space enjoyed over US$3,000,000 in sales, Bushnell felt that the poor marketing of Nutting left significant sales on the table and decided that his next game would be licensed to a bigger manufacturer.

[edit] Atari Inc.

Main article: Atari, Inc

In 1972, Bushnell and Dabney set off on their own, and learned that the name "Syzygy" was in use. It was claimed by Bushnell at alternate times to be in use by both a candle company owned by a Mendocino hippie commune [6][7] [8] [8] [9] and a roofing company [10]. They instead incorporated under the name Atari, a reference to a check-like position in the game Go. They rented their first office on Scott Boulevard in Sunnyvale, California. They then contracted with Bally Manufacturing to create a driving game. To handle the additional work they hired their first employee, engineer Allan Alcorn. Bushnell later bought out Dabney, who was worried about the success of the video game market, and decided to take over the pinball servicing route instead.

Nolan Bushnell attended the Burlingame, California demonstration of the Magnavox Odyssey and set about the task of taking the Magnavox tennis game design and making a coin-op version of it as a test project for Atari's new engineer. Alcorn incorporated many of his own improvements to the game design (such as scoring and sound), and Pong was born. Pong proved to be very popular, and Nolan and company 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 Al Alcorn with an idea to develop a home version of Pong. Thanks to a marketing and distribution agreement with Sears, Pong sales soared when the unit was released in 1975.

Even though Atari would later enter the home computer market, initially Nolan declined an offer to enter it. 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[11], 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, witnessed an amazing sight — his children were hovering around video game cabinets at Walt Disney World. Looking further into these machines, he saw a whole new future. Warner Communications then 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 of 1977.

Bushnell was eventually forced out of the company in November 1978 after a dispute with Warner over the future direction of the company, 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 become a US$2 billion empire and "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.

[edit] Chuck E. Cheese's Pizza Time Theatre

Main article: Chuck E. Cheese

While still at Atari in 1977, Bushnell had purchased Pizza Time Theatre back from Warner Communications (as Pizza Time was created by Bushnell and was originally developed as distribution channel for Atari Games while Bushnell was at Atari), a place where kids could go and eat pizza and play video games. The Pizza Time Theatre / Chuck E. Cheese's also had animatronic animals that played music as entertainment. (Bushnell had always wanted to work for Walt Disney, but was continually turned down for employment when he was first starting out after graduation; Chuck E. Cheese's was his homage to Disney and the technology developed there.) In 1981 Bushnell turned day-to-day food operations of Chuck E. Cheese’s to a newly-hired restaurant executive and focused on Catalyst Technologies.

Through 1982 and 1983 Nolan had been concentrating on his Chuck E. Cheese's subsidiaries and side projects, such as Catalyst Technologies. Much to the criticism of some, he had been funding these by taking money out of Chuck E. Cheese (such as with video game company Sente, which was made a subsidiary) or taking out massive loans based on Chuck E. Cheese stock. To make matters worse, Chuck E. Cheese’s had started to lose money in 1982 and was now in the red.

Bushnell continued to spend money on side projects and spend more and more time with his yacht, Charlie. By the time Bushnell's spending and lack of involvement caught up with him, it was too late and Chuck E. Cheese was facing bankruptcy. President and long time friend Joe Keenan resigned that fall. Nolan tried to step back in, blaming the money problems on over expansion and saturation in local markets by the management team. He resigned in February of 1984, when his attempt was rebuffed by the Board of Directors. Chuck E. Cheese's Pizza Time Theaters (now named after its famous mouse mascot) entered bankruptcy in the fall of 1984.

ShowBiz Pizza, a competing Pizza/Arcade family restaurant then purchased Chuck E. Cheese's Pizza Time Theatre and assumed their debt. The newly formed company, ShowBiz Pizza Time, operated restaurants under both brands for a period of time before unifying all locations under the Chuck E. Cheese's brand. Today over 500 locations of this restaurant are in business, and it remains highly successful.

[edit] Catalyst Technologies Venture Capital Group

Bushnell founded the Catalyst Technologies Venture Capital Group, one of the first business incubators. The Catalyst Group companies included Androbot, Etak, Cumma, Axlon and many more. Axlon launched many consumer and consumer electronic products successfully, most notably AG Bear, a bear that mumbled/echoed a child's words back to him/her; Axlon was largely sold to Hasbro. Etak was the first company to digitize the maps of the world, ultimately providing the backbone for Google maps, mapquest.com, and other navigation systems; Etak was sold to Rupert Murdoch in the 1980s. In May of 2000 Etak, headquartered in Menlo Park, California became a wholly owned subsidiary of Tele Atlas.

[edit] Sente

In 1984, Bushnell once again entered the video game business, when he founded Sente Games. (Sente is the Japanese term for the initiative or control in Go, Bushnell's favorite game). Bally/Midway agreed to be Sente's distributor; the list of published Sente titles includes the popular one-on-one hockey game, Hat Trick (1984).

[edit] uWink

Main article: uWink

Bushnell's most recent company is uWink, which has gone through several failed iterations including a touch-screen kiosk designer and an online Entertainment Systems network[12]. After nearly 7 years and over $24million in investor funding, the latest version (announced in 2005) is a new interactive entertainment restaurant called the uWink Media Bistro, whose concept builds off his Chuck E. Cheese venture and previous 1988-1989 venture Bots Inc., which developed similar systems of customer-side point-of-sale touch-screen terminals in addition to autonomous pizza-delivery robots for Little Caesar's Pizza. Guests may order food and drinks via screens at each table, through which guests may also enjoy games, movie trailers and short videos. (Bushnell had pioneered this concept through Bots nearly 20 years earlier.) The first Bistro opened in Woodland Hills, California on October 16, 2006.

[edit] Other ventures

In 1981, Bushnell created the TimberTech Computer Camp in Scotts Valley, California.

Bushnell provided initial start-up funding for the 1984 founding of Etak, which created the first commercial automotive navigation system.

In the late 1980s, Bushnell company Axlon managed the development of two new games for the Atari 2600, most likely as part of a marketing attempt to revive sales of the system, already more than a decade old.

In 1991, Bushnell endorsed the Commodore International CDTV, a CD-ROM-based version of the Amiga 500 computer repackaged for the consumer electronics market.

In 2005, he served as a judge on the USA Network reality series Made in the USA.

In 2007, Bushnell joined the board of NeoEdge Networks as Chairman.

[edit] References

  1. ^ Games people play
  2. ^ http://www.hollywood-newsroom.com/news/leonardo-dicaprio-to-portray-the-atari-and-chuck-e-cheese-founder/
  3. ^ Big History of the Arcade. Retrieved on 2007-08-31.
  4. ^ Nolan Bushnell profile. Retrieved on 2007-08-31.
  5. ^ Computer Space History. Retrieved on 2007-08-31.
  6. ^ Player 1 Stage 2: Atari Rising. Retrieved on 2007-05-15.
  7. ^ ATARI'S PONG - A LEGEND BEGINS. Retrieved on 2007-05-15.
  8. ^ a b Atari History. Retrieved on 2007-05-15.
  9. ^ Kent, Steve (2001). The Ultimate History Of Video Games. Prima Publishing, 35. ISBN 0-7615-3643-4. 
  10. ^ Moby Games Nolan Bushnell Bio.
  11. ^ Young, Jeffrey S. (1988). Steve Jobs: The Journey Is The Reward. Glenview, IL, USA: Scott, Foresman And Company, 90-91, 94. ISBN 0-673-18864-7. 
  12. ^ uWink website archive from 2002.. Retrieved on 2007-05-02.
  • Zap: the Rise and Fall of Atari, by Scott Coen (1984) ISBN 0-7388-6883-3
  • Gaming 101: A Contemporary History of PC and Video Games, by George Jones (2005) ISBN 1-55622-080-4
  • The Ultimate History of Video Games: From Pong to Pokémon--The story Behind the Craze That Touched Our Lives and Changed the World, by Steven L. Kent (2001) ISBN 0-7615-3643-4
  • High Score!: The Illustrated History of Electronic Games, by Rusel DeMaria, Johnny L. Wilson (2003) ISBN 0-07-223172-6
  • The First Quarter, by Steven L. Kent

[edit] External links

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