On this day in 1974 Atari introduced the arcade game, Gran Trak 10. Gran Trak 10 is considered to be the first ever arcade car racing game, and is the first of many other things as well. It is the first arcade game to use solid state read-only memory (ROM) in storing sprites for each car, the game timer, race track and score. This may very well have instigated the use of integrated circuit-based ROM that later became the standard for arcade games.
Because of its use of ROM the Gran Trak 10 was the first game to have defined characters rather than mathematically manipulated dots. It was also the first arcade game to use a four-position gear shifter, a steering wheel and two foot pedals for its controls.