Those of us who have tried, know how extremely hard it can be to start your own business and become successful. However, an aspiring entrepreneur by the name of Nolan Bushnell beat the odds and forever changed the world of gaming. Nolan K. Bushnell, was born February 5th, 1943 in Clearfield, Utah. He graduated from the University of Utah in 1968. During his time at the University, studying Computer Science, Mr. Bushnell stumbled upon a PDP-1 (a large Super Computer) with a game on it called “Spacewar”(created in 1962 by Steve “Slug” Russell, a student at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology). Nolan was so fascinated by the game that in 1971, Nolan and partner Ted Dabney formed Syzygy— which means simply, the alignment of heavenly bodies. With Syzygy open for business, Nolan had an outing to create his own arcade version of Spacewar,
they called it Computer Space.
Once a working version of Computer Space was up and running, they searched for a manufacturer. One day while talking to his dentist about his arcade game, he found out about a patient who worked for Nutting Associates. Nolan and Ted went to pitch Computer Space and caught the interest of the Coin-Op company, owned by Bill Nutting. Nutting Associates funded the Computer Space project and only about 1,500 Computer Space’s where produced. Incidentally, they are extremely sought after amongst Arcade collector’s. It is fun to note that Computer Space makes an appearance in the Cult Classic Science Fiction movie, Soylent Green—released in 1973.
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