I don’t know about you, but I am tired of the heroic mythologies of great men (it’s almost always men) who, according to a certain type of biographer or historian, were singular geniuses who drove progress, change, innovation, and well often, ruin. Writer and Chair of Cinema and Media Studies in the Media School at Indiana University, Raiford Guins sure seems over that kind of storytelling too. Thank goodness.
In his latest work, King Pong: How Atari Bounced Across Markets to Make Millions, Guins takes a more expansive view of the often-told story of the history of Atari and its famous co-founder Nolan Bushnell. In this short but dense book he places the creation of Atari in the world of late 1960’s-early 1970’s Silicon Valley, tracing small innovations made by a number of different people and companies that led to the runaway success of Atari’s first game, Pong. By looking as Guins says “outside the screen” at physical cabinet designs, the coin-op industry, Silicon Valley machinations, and the odd touch of serendipity he grounds the story of a famous brand in the time and place that helped bring it about. He also looks at how the success of the coin-operated version of Pong helped pave the way for the home entertainment systems found in just about every American household today.
