Walter Day
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Walter Aldro Day, Jr. (born May 14, 1949 in Oakland, California) is a singer/songwriter [1] and historian who has launched numerous research projects that utilize printed objects to study the history of culture. In recent years, Walter Day also was the founder of Twin Galaxies, an international organization that tracks high-score statistics for the worldwide electronic video gaming hobby.
The son of Walter Aldro Day, Sr. (born Swampscott, MA, October 11,1923) and Barbara Bernice Litch Day (born Lynn, MA, June 19,1925), Walter Day spent his earliest years living in Alameda, California and on the University of California Berkeley Campus where his father pursued a Bachelor's Degree in Accounting. The middle name "Aldro," shared with his father, was taken from a close family friend, Aldro Hibbard, a noted Rockport artist. His early childhood years were also spent in Encino, Hawthorne and Wilmington, California. When his father gained employment in the Aero Space Industry, working at North American Aviation in Southern California, the Day family moved into a house at 2872 W. Skywood Circle in Anaheim, California, on October 30, 1954, becoming one of the many pioneering families who moved to Orange County before Disneyland opened on July 17,1955.
Day's earliest education was received at Mattie Lou Maxwell Elementary School and Albert Schweitzer Elementary School -- both in Anaheim. After two years at Dale Junior High School in Anaheim, Day's family returned to their hometown of Lynn, MA where Day finished the 9th grade at Pickering Junior High School. Day graduated from Lynn English High School in 1967 and earned an A.A. Degree at North Shore Community College (NSCC) in Beverly, MA.
After college, Walter Day experienced a temporary immersion in the hippie culture found in San Francisco's Haight Asbury district and Berkeley's Telegraph Avenue (1968-1969). However, leaving the hippie culture behind, Day became a member of the worldwide Transcendental Meditation organization and received training as a TM Teacher at Estes Park, CO (October 4 - December 20, 1970), under the personal tutelage of Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. Working as a volunteer for a non-profit organization, the Students International Meditation Society (SIMS), Day taught Transcendental Meditation while continuing his college education until 1979.
In 1976, while a college student at Salem State College in Salem, MA, Walter Day published a tabloid newspaper titled MASTHEAD:A Journal for Teaching History with Old Newspapers. In addition to promoting original, historic newspapers as teaching aids for the history teacher, MASTHEAD functioned as the premiere marketplace for bringing together teachers and historic newspaper vendors. Between 1976 and 1978, MASTHEAD saw eleven issues published, with issue number six reaching a circulation of 8300 copies. Walter Day received college credit from Salem State College for this venture in 1977.
Between 1980 and 1981, Walter Day promoted historic newspapers and collected high school yearbooks under the name When History Was News.[2] Though appearing on more than 150 TV and radio shows during these years, Day's activities enjoyed very little success. [3]
Between 1989-1994, Walter Day championed the idea of using the common business card as a window on history, proposing that a display of business cards showing the diversity of life in the 20th Century could be both educational and thought provoking. This project, which is still in the process of development by Day, is titled: Remembering the 20th Century: An Educational Display of Business Cards Highlighting 100 Years of Cultural Change. This museum display will be unveiled in 2009 or 2010 in Fairfield, Iowa, which is considered the Renaissance Capital of the World.
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[edit] Musical Background
Walter Day's involvement with music began in 1956, when, at the age of seven years, his father enrolled him in accordion lessons with Kay Kaylie Music Studios in Buena Park, California. Though his proficiency with the accordion found him competing in the 1959 Western States Accordion Festival in Long Beach, California (August, 1959), he rebelled against the enforced lessons and eventually gave up the instrument in 1962.
In February, 1973, Day was introduced to Scott Joplin's classic ragtime piano music while spending time in Gloucester, Massachusetts. Day fell in love with ragtime music and proceeded to re-learn how to read music and teach himself how to play the piano. Within three months of first hearing a recording of Scott Joplin's Maple Leaf Rag, Day, through diligent practice, could play the Maple Leaf Rag perfectly. By 1976, Day could play most of the themes from 38 different piano rags. His ragtime skills led to public concerts in Salem, Massachusetts; Arosa, Switzerland; Avoriaz, France; LePlagne, France; Fairfield, Iowa and South Fallsburg, New York.
As portrayed in recent documentary movies: Chasing Ghosts:Beyond the Arcade and the King of Kong:A Fistful of Quarters, Day's heart's desire is to be a singer/songwriter who performs his own music on the stage. The two documentaries reveal that Day, reeling from a romantically broken-heart, began to hear music playing in his heart, taking the form of pop songs. After a few years of writing down the songs he would hear and singing them into a recorder, Day found himself with 138 different songs, "each with melodies you could whistle." In explaining this experience, Day says in the King of Kong movie: "I didn't write these songs, I listened to them."
[edit] Involvement with Video Games
On November 10, 1981, Day opened an arcade in Ottumwa, Iowa called Twin Galaxies, Though it was a modest arcade of merely 22 arcade games, it soon became internationally known as the International Scorekeeper for the burgeoning video game industry. Under Day's direction, Twin Galaxies set rules for gameplay on hundreds of games while maintaining a records database of competitive high scores. Twin Galaxies is considered by gaming historians as being the first organizer of professional gaming, putting competitive electronic gaming on the world map.
A former oil executive, Day left the oil industry and opened the arcade as an excuse to be able to play more video games. Twin Galaxies' role as a small-town arcade was forever altered when the January 15, 1982 issue of TIME magazine carried a cover story on the growing popularity of video games. The story focused on the high-scoring exploits of Steve Juraszek, a 15-year-old Illinois suburbanite, who had broken the world record on Defender, with a score of 15,963,100 points. When a local Ottumwa boy, Tony Mattan, broke Juraszek's record with 24,565,975 points, Day was inspired to create the International Scoreboard.
After Mattan's record-breaking accomplishment, Walter Day attempted to contact Williams Electronics, the creators of the game, to report Mattan's score. However, upon learning that neither Williams or Namco kept any records of high scores, he decided to set up his own scoreboard. He did so that same day, on February 9, 1982. Players from all around the United States began sending in their scores. Within six months of launching the scoreboard, Day was receiving about 50-75 phone calls per day, with many coming from countries other than the USA.
[edit] Growing popularity
Eventually, Day had the idea of staging competitive gaming events. Day found that California and North Carolina had the highest concentration of all-star gamers, so he formulated a plan: the top players from each state would form teams and face off. He decided that the California team would face the North Carolina team. It took much prodding from Day to get the "California Challenges North Carolina All-Star Playoff" organized, which took place over the weekend of August 27-30, 1982, with California beating North Carolina 10-7.
Eventually, video game-related magazines, such as Computer and Video Games and Joystik, began publishing full-page tables of high scores culled from Day's archive. Day soon made a lucrative business out of this, as more and more magazines asked for permission to print the records. Eventually, the Guinness Book of World Records dedicated an entire category to Twin Galaxies, which listed the world records on the most popular games. This section became a hit for Guinness, as many players wanted to know the highest score on their favorite games.
On November 7, 1982, the top players were all photographed for Life magazine, and on November 30, Ottumwa was declared the official "Video Game Capital of the World" by its mayor, Jerry Parker. On March 19, 1983, a special award ceremony was held, which included Iowa governor Terry Branstad, and high-ranking members of Atari, honoring Twin Galaxies and Day.
[edit] The U.S. National Video Game Team
On July 25, 1983, Day founded the U.S. National Video Game Team, consisting of he and five of the nation's best players: Billy Mitchell, from Hollywood, Florida; Steve Harris, from Gladstone, Missouri; Jay Kim, from Miami, Florida; Ben Gold, from Dallas, Texas, and Tim McVey, of Ottumwa, Iowa.
On August 11, 1983, the USNVGT embarked on a two-week national bus tour in support of the 1983 Video Game Master's Tournament, a charity fundraiser for cystic fibrosis research. Attracting audiences at every stop on the tour, the team members set new world records while encouraging audiences to donate to the fundraiser. Later in the tour, in September 1983, Day and other team mebers hand-delivered documents to both the Italian Embassy and the Japanese embassy, to challenge them to an "international video game challenge." Italy responded favorably to the proposed challenge while Japan declined. However, the failing business climate of the worldwide gaming industry at that time did not support these plans and the match never took place.
