On this day in 1972 the Atari Corporation officially released Pong, a table tennis video game that featured simple two-dimensional graphics. The game was originally created by Allan Alcorn as a training exercise, and later developed by Atari founders Nolan Bushnell and Ted Dabney. It had two paddles on either side of the screen that represented the players, who would move the paddles up and down the screen to deflect the ball and keep it from passing into their goal.
The game went on to become the first commercially successful video game, gaining massive popularity both in homes and at video arcades. Pong helped establish the video game industry, and several other games that followed were patterned after its gameplay. Due to its immense cultural impact, it is now a part of the permanent collection of the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C.
Pong – Image taken from bbc.com