1.
San Francisco
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San Francisco, officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the cultural, commercial, and financial center of Northern California. It is the birthplace of the United Nations, the California Gold Rush of 1849 brought rapid growth, making it the largest city on the West Coast at the time. San Francisco became a consolidated city-county in 1856, after three-quarters of the city was destroyed by the 1906 earthquake and fire, San Francisco was quickly rebuilt, hosting the Panama-Pacific International Exposition nine years later. In World War II, San Francisco was a port of embarkation for service members shipping out to the Pacific Theater. Politically, the city votes strongly along liberal Democratic Party lines, San Francisco is also the headquarters of five major banking institutions and various other companies such as Levi Strauss & Co. Dolby, Airbnb, Weebly, Pacific Gas and Electric Company, Yelp, Pinterest, Twitter, Uber, Lyft, Mozilla, Wikimedia Foundation, as of 2016, San Francisco is ranked high on world liveability rankings. The earliest archaeological evidence of habitation of the territory of the city of San Francisco dates to 3000 BC. Upon independence from Spain in 1821, the became part of Mexico. Under Mexican rule, the system gradually ended, and its lands became privatized. In 1835, Englishman William Richardson erected the first independent homestead, together with Alcalde Francisco de Haro, he laid out a street plan for the expanded settlement, and the town, named Yerba Buena, began to attract American settlers. Commodore John D. Sloat claimed California for the United States on July 7,1846, during the Mexican–American War, montgomery arrived to claim Yerba Buena two days later. Yerba Buena was renamed San Francisco on January 30 of the next year, despite its attractive location as a port and naval base, San Francisco was still a small settlement with inhospitable geography. The California Gold Rush brought a flood of treasure seekers, with their sourdough bread in tow, prospectors accumulated in San Francisco over rival Benicia, raising the population from 1,000 in 1848 to 25,000 by December 1849. The promise of fabulous riches was so strong that crews on arriving vessels deserted and rushed off to the gold fields, leaving behind a forest of masts in San Francisco harbor. Some of these approximately 500 abandoned ships were used at times as storeships, saloons and hotels, many were left to rot, by 1851 the harbor was extended out into the bay by wharves while buildings were erected on piles among the ships. By 1870 Yerba Buena Cove had been filled to create new land, buried ships are occasionally exposed when foundations are dug for new buildings. California was quickly granted statehood in 1850 and the U. S. military built Fort Point at the Golden Gate, silver discoveries, including the Comstock Lode in Nevada in 1859, further drove rapid population growth. With hordes of fortune seekers streaming through the city, lawlessness was common, and the Barbary Coast section of town gained notoriety as a haven for criminals, prostitution, entrepreneurs sought to capitalize on the wealth generated by the Gold Rush
2.
University of California, Berkeley
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The University of California, Berkeley, is a public research university located in Berkeley, California. In 1960s, UC Berkeley was particularly noted for the Free Speech Movement as well as the Anti-Vietnam War Movement led by its students. S, Department of Energy, and is home to many world-renowned research institutes and organizations including Mathematical Sciences Research Institute and Space Sciences Laboratory. Faculty member J. R. Oppenheimer, the father of the atomic bomb, Lawrence Livermore Lab also discovered or co-discovered six chemical elements. The Academic Ranking of World Universities also ranks the University of California, Berkeley, third in the world overall, in 1866, the private College of California purchased the land comprising the current Berkeley campus. Ten faculty members and almost 40 students made up the new University of California when it opened in Oakland in 1869, billings was a trustee of the College of California and suggested that the college be named in honor of the Anglo-Irish philosopher George Berkeley. In 1870, Henry Durant, the founder of the College of California, with the completion of North and South Halls in 1873, the university relocated to its Berkeley location with 167 male and 22 female students and held its first classes. In 1905, the University Farm was established near Sacramento, ultimately becoming the University of California, by the 1920s, the number of campus buildings had grown substantially, and included twenty structures designed by architect John Galen Howard. Robert Gordon Sproul served as president from 1930 to 1958, by 1942, the American Council on Education ranked UC Berkeley second only to Harvard University in the number of distinguished departments. During World War II, following Glenn Seaborgs then-secret discovery of plutonium, UC Berkeley physics professor J. Robert Oppenheimer was named scientific head of the Manhattan Project in 1942. Along with the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley is now a partner in managing two other labs, Los Alamos National Laboratory and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, originally, military training was compulsory for male undergraduates, and Berkeley housed an armory for that purpose. In 1917, Berkeleys ROTC program was established, and its School of Military Aeronautics trained future pilots, including Jimmy Doolittle, both Robert McNamara and Frederick C. Weyand graduated from UC Berkeleys ROTC program, earning B. A. degrees in 1937 and 1938, in 1926, future fleet admiral Chester W. Nimitz established the first Naval Reserve Officers Training Corps unit at Berkeley. The Board of Regents ended compulsory military training at Berkeley in 1962, during the McCarthy era in 1949, the Board of Regents adopted an anti-communist loyalty oath. A number of faculty members objected and were dismissed, ten years passed before they were reinstated with back pay, in 1952, the University of California became an entity separate from the Berkeley campus. Each campus was given autonomy and its own Chancellor. Then-president Sproul assumed presidency of the entire University of California system, Berkeley gained a reputation for student activism in the 1960s with the Free Speech Movement of 1964 and opposition to the Vietnam War. In the highly publicized Peoples Park protest in 1969, students and the school conflicted over use of a plot of land, then governor of California Ronald Reagan called the Berkeley campus a haven for communist sympathizers, protesters, and sex deviants. Modern students at Berkeley are less active, with a greater percentage of moderates and conservatives
3.
Pong
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Pong is one of the earliest arcade video games and the first sports arcade video game. It is a tennis sports game featuring simple two-dimensional graphics. While other arcade games such as Computer Space came before it. The game was manufactured by Atari, which released it in 1972. Allan Alcorn created Pong as a training exercise assigned to him by Atari co-founder Nolan Bushnell, Bushnell based the idea on an electronic ping-pong game included in the Magnavox Odyssey, which later resulted in a lawsuit against Atari. Surprised by the quality of Alcorns work, Bushnell and Atari co-founder Ted Dabney decided to manufacture the game, soon after its release, several companies began producing games that copied Pongs gameplay, and eventually released new types of games. As a result, Atari encouraged its staff to more innovative games. The company released several sequels that built upon the gameplay by adding new features. During the 1975 Christmas season, Atari released a version of Pong exclusively through Sears retail stores. It was also a success and led to numerous copies. The game has been remade on numerous home and portable platforms following its release, Pong has been referenced and parodied in multiple television shows and video games, and has been a part of several video game and cultural exhibitions. Pong is a sports game that simulates table tennis. Players use the paddles to hit a back and forth. The aim is for player to reach eleven points before the opponent. Pong was the first game developed by Atari, after producing Computer Space, Bushnell decided to form a company to produce more games by licensing ideas to other companies. The first contract was with Bally Manufacturing Corporation for a driving game, soon after the founding, Bushnell hired Allan Alcorn because of his experience with electrical engineering and computer science, Bushnell and Dabney also had previously worked with him at Ampex. Prior to working at Atari, Alcorn had no experience with video games, to acclimate Alcorn to creating games, Bushnell gave him a project secretly meant to be a warm-up exercise. Bushnell told Alcorn that he had a contract with General Electric for a product, in 2011, Bushnell stated that the game was inspired by previous versions of electronic tennis he had played before, Bushnell played a version on a PDP-1 computer in 1964 while attending college
4.
Electrical engineering
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Electrical engineering is a field of engineering that generally deals with the study and application of electricity, electronics, and electromagnetism. This field first became an occupation in the later half of the 19th century after commercialization of the electric telegraph, the telephone. Subsequently, broadcasting and recording media made electronics part of daily life, the invention of the transistor, and later the integrated circuit, brought down the cost of electronics to the point they can be used in almost any household object. Electrical engineers typically hold a degree in engineering or electronic engineering. Practicing engineers may have professional certification and be members of a professional body, such bodies include the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers and the Institution of Engineering and Technology. Electrical engineers work in a wide range of industries and the skills required are likewise variable. These range from basic circuit theory to the management skills required of a project manager, the tools and equipment that an individual engineer may need are similarly variable, ranging from a simple voltmeter to a top end analyzer to sophisticated design and manufacturing software. Electricity has been a subject of scientific interest since at least the early 17th century and he also designed the versorium, a device that detected the presence of statically charged objects. In the 19th century, research into the subject started to intensify, Electrical engineering became a profession in the later 19th century. Practitioners had created an electric telegraph network and the first professional electrical engineering institutions were founded in the UK. Over 50 years later, he joined the new Society of Telegraph Engineers where he was regarded by other members as the first of their cohort, Practical applications and advances in such fields created an increasing need for standardised units of measure. They led to the standardization of the units volt, ampere, coulomb, ohm, farad. This was achieved at a conference in Chicago in 1893. During these years, the study of electricity was considered to be a subfield of physics. Thats because early electrical technology was electromechanical in nature, the Technische Universität Darmstadt founded the worlds first department of electrical engineering in 1882. The first course in engineering was taught in 1883 in Cornell’s Sibley College of Mechanical Engineering. It was not until about 1885 that Cornell President Andrew Dickson White established the first Department of Electrical Engineering in the United States, in the same year, University College London founded the first chair of electrical engineering in Great Britain. Professor Mendell P. Weinbach at University of Missouri soon followed suit by establishing the engineering department in 1886
5.
Computer science
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Computer science is the study of the theory, experimentation, and engineering that form the basis for the design and use of computers. An alternate, more succinct definition of science is the study of automating algorithmic processes that scale. A computer scientist specializes in the theory of computation and the design of computational systems and its fields can be divided into a variety of theoretical and practical disciplines. Some fields, such as computational complexity theory, are highly abstract, other fields still focus on challenges in implementing computation. Human–computer interaction considers the challenges in making computers and computations useful, usable, the earliest foundations of what would become computer science predate the invention of the modern digital computer. Machines for calculating fixed numerical tasks such as the abacus have existed since antiquity, further, algorithms for performing computations have existed since antiquity, even before the development of sophisticated computing equipment. Wilhelm Schickard designed and constructed the first working mechanical calculator in 1623, in 1673, Gottfried Leibniz demonstrated a digital mechanical calculator, called the Stepped Reckoner. He may be considered the first computer scientist and information theorist, for, among other reasons and he started developing this machine in 1834, and in less than two years, he had sketched out many of the salient features of the modern computer. A crucial step was the adoption of a card system derived from the Jacquard loom making it infinitely programmable. Around 1885, Herman Hollerith invented the tabulator, which used punched cards to process statistical information, when the machine was finished, some hailed it as Babbages dream come true. During the 1940s, as new and more powerful computing machines were developed, as it became clear that computers could be used for more than just mathematical calculations, the field of computer science broadened to study computation in general. Computer science began to be established as an academic discipline in the 1950s. The worlds first computer science program, the Cambridge Diploma in Computer Science. The first computer science program in the United States was formed at Purdue University in 1962. Since practical computers became available, many applications of computing have become distinct areas of study in their own rights and it is the now well-known IBM brand that formed part of the computer science revolution during this time. IBM released the IBM704 and later the IBM709 computers, still, working with the IBM was frustrating if you had misplaced as much as one letter in one instruction, the program would crash, and you would have to start the whole process over again. During the late 1950s, the science discipline was very much in its developmental stages. Time has seen significant improvements in the usability and effectiveness of computing technology, modern society has seen a significant shift in the users of computer technology, from usage only by experts and professionals, to a near-ubiquitous user base
6.
California
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California is the most populous state in the United States and the third most extensive by area. Located on the western coast of the U. S, California is bordered by the other U. S. states of Oregon, Nevada, and Arizona and shares an international border with the Mexican state of Baja California. Los Angeles is Californias most populous city, and the second largest after New York City. The Los Angeles Area and the San Francisco Bay Area are the nations second- and fifth-most populous urban regions, California also has the nations most populous county, Los Angeles County, and its largest county by area, San Bernardino County. The Central Valley, an agricultural area, dominates the states center. What is now California was first settled by various Native American tribes before being explored by a number of European expeditions during the 16th and 17th centuries, the Spanish Empire then claimed it as part of Alta California in their New Spain colony. The area became a part of Mexico in 1821 following its war for independence. The western portion of Alta California then was organized as the State of California, the California Gold Rush starting in 1848 led to dramatic social and demographic changes, with large-scale emigration from the east and abroad with an accompanying economic boom. If it were a country, California would be the 6th largest economy in the world, fifty-eight percent of the states economy is centered on finance, government, real estate services, technology, and professional, scientific and technical business services. Although it accounts for only 1.5 percent of the states economy, the story of Calafia is recorded in a 1510 work The Adventures of Esplandián, written as a sequel to Amadis de Gaula by Spanish adventure writer Garci Rodríguez de Montalvo. The kingdom of Queen Calafia, according to Montalvo, was said to be a land inhabited by griffins and other strange beasts. This conventional wisdom that California was an island, with maps drawn to reflect this belief, shortened forms of the states name include CA, Cal. Calif. and US-CA. Settled by successive waves of arrivals during the last 10,000 years, various estimates of the native population range from 100,000 to 300,000. The Indigenous peoples of California included more than 70 distinct groups of Native Americans, ranging from large, settled populations living on the coast to groups in the interior. California groups also were diverse in their organization with bands, tribes, villages. Trade, intermarriage and military alliances fostered many social and economic relationships among the diverse groups, the first European effort to explore the coast as far north as the Russian River was a Spanish sailing expedition, led by Portuguese captain Juan Rodríguez Cabrillo, in 1542. Some 37 years later English explorer Francis Drake also explored and claimed a portion of the California coast in 1579. Spanish traders made unintended visits with the Manila galleons on their trips from the Philippines beginning in 1565
7.
Ampex
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Ampex is an American electronics company founded in 1944 by Alexander M. Poniatoff. The name AMPEX is an acronym, created by its founder, at one time public, the remaining ongoing business unit was acquired by Delta Information Systems in October 2014, with the original parent, Ampex Corporation, ceasing operations in October 2014. Ampexs first great success was a line of tape recorders developed from the German wartime Magnetophon system at the behest of Bing Crosby. Ampex quickly became a leader in audio technology, developing many of the analog recording formats for both music and movies that remained in use into the 1990s. They also introduced multi-track recording, slow-motion and instant playback television, Ampexs tape business was rendered obsolete during the 1990s, and the company turned to digital storage products. They never managed to become a player in this field, russian inventor Alexander Matthew Poniatoff established the company in San Carlos, California, in 1944 as the Ampex Electric and Manufacturing Company. The name came from his initials plus ex to avoid using the name AMP already in use, during World War II, Ampex was a small manufacturer of high quality electric motors and generators for radars that used alnico 5 magnets from General Electric. Ampexs first offices were at 1313 Laurel St. San Carlos California, near the end of the war, while serving in the U. S. Army Signal Corps, Major Jack Mullin was assigned to investigate German radio and electronics experiments. He discovered the Magnetophons with AC biasing on a trip to Radio Frankfurt, the device produced much better fidelity than shellac records. Mullin acquired two Magnetophon recorders and 50 reels of BASF Type L tape, and brought them to America and he demonstrated them to the Institute of Radio Engineers in San Francisco on May 16,1946. Bing Crosby, a big star on radio at the time, was receptive to the idea of pre-recording his radio programs and he disliked the regimentation of live broadcasts, and much preferred the relaxed atmosphere of the recording studio. This may have been what Crosby was hoping to avoid, as that was the argument Crosby used with the network when he asked to use transcription disc recordings of his show. Those recordings were made directly from the live east coast show, in June 1947, Mullin, who was pitching the technology to the major Hollywood movie studios, got the chance to demonstrate his modified tape recorders to Crosby. When Crosby heard a demonstration of Mullins tape recorders, he saw the potential of the new technology. Ampex was finishing its prototype of the Model 200 tape recorder, after a successful test broadcast, ABC agreed to allow Crosby to pre-record his shows on tape. Crosby immediately appointed Mullin as his engineer and placed an order for $50,000 worth of the new recorders so that Ampex could develop a commercial production model from the prototypes. Crosby Enterprises was Ampexs West Coast representative until 1957, the companys first tape recorder, the Ampex Model 200A, was first shipped in April 1948. The first two units, serial numbers 1 and 2, were used to record the Bing Crosby Show
8.
Apple Inc.
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Apple is an American multinational technology company headquartered in Cupertino, California that designs, develops, and sells consumer electronics, computer software, and online services. Apples consumer software includes the macOS and iOS operating systems, the media player, the Safari web browser. Its online services include the iTunes Store, the iOS App Store and Mac App Store, Apple Music, Apple was founded by Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, and Ronald Wayne in April 1976 to develop and sell personal computers. It was incorporated as Apple Computer, Inc. in January 1977, Apple joined the Dow Jones Industrial Average in March 2015. In November 2014, Apple became the first U. S. company to be valued at over US$700 billion in addition to being the largest publicly traded corporation in the world by market capitalization. The company employs 115,000 full-time employees as of July 2015 and it operates the online Apple Store and iTunes Store, the latter of which is the worlds largest music retailer. Consumers use more than one billion Apple products worldwide as of March 2016, Apples worldwide annual revenue totaled $233 billion for the fiscal year ending in September 2015. This revenue accounts for approximately 1. 25% of the total United States GDP.1 billion, the corporation receives significant criticism regarding the labor practices of its contractors and its environmental and business practices, including the origins of source materials. Apple was founded on April 1,1976, by Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, the Apple I kits were computers single-handedly designed and hand-built by Wozniak and first shown to the public at the Homebrew Computer Club. The Apple I was sold as a motherboard, which was less than what is now considered a personal computer. The Apple I went on sale in July 1976 and was market-priced at $666.66, Apple was incorporated January 3,1977, without Wayne, who sold his share of the company back to Jobs and Wozniak for $800. Multimillionaire Mike Markkula provided essential business expertise and funding of $250,000 during the incorporation of Apple, during the first five years of operations revenues grew exponentially, doubling about every four months. Between September 1977 and September 1980 yearly sales grew from $775,000 to $118m, the Apple II, also invented by Wozniak, was introduced on April 16,1977, at the first West Coast Computer Faire. It differed from its rivals, the TRS-80 and Commodore PET, because of its character cell-based color graphics. While early Apple II models used ordinary cassette tapes as storage devices, they were superseded by the introduction of a 5 1/4 inch floppy disk drive and interface called the Disk II. The Apple II was chosen to be the platform for the first killer app of the business world, VisiCalc. VisiCalc created a market for the Apple II and gave home users an additional reason to buy an Apple II. Before VisiCalc, Apple had been a distant third place competitor to Commodore, by the end of the 1970s, Apple had a staff of computer designers and a production line
9.
Amusement arcade
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In some countries, some types of arcades are also legally permitted to provide gambling machines such as slot machines or pachinko machines. Games are usually housed in cabinets, the term used for ancestors of these venues in the beginning of 20th century was penny arcades. Video games were introduced in amusement arcades in the late 1970s and were most popular during the age of arcade video games. Arcades became popular with children and particularly adolescents, which led parents to be concerned that video game playing might cause them to skip school, a penny arcade can be any type of venue for coin-operated devices, usually for entertainment. The term came into use about 1905-1910, the name derives from the penny, once a staple coin for the machines. Coin operated shooter games Penny arcades later led to the creation of video arcades in the 1970s, Arcades catering for video games began to gain momentum in the late 1970s with games such as Space Invaders and Galaxian and became widespread in 1980 with Pac-Man, Centipede and others. The central processing unit in these games allowed for more complexity than earlier games such as Ataris Pong. This emphasis on the gameplay explains why many of these continue to be enjoyed as of 2014. The golden age of arcade games in the 1980s became a peak era of video arcade game popularity, innovation. Color arcade games became more prevalent and video arcades themselves started appearing outside their traditional bowling-alley, designers experimented with a wide variety of game genres, while developers still had to work within strict limits of available processor-power and memory. The era saw the spread of video arcades across North America, Western Europe. The number of arcades in North America, for example. Beginning with Space Invaders, video games also started to appear in supermarkets, restaurants, liquor stores, gas stations. This boom came to an end in the mid-1980s, in what has been referred to as the great coin-op video crash of 1983, on November 30,1982, Jerry Parker, the Mayor of Ottumwa, Iowa, declared his city the Video Game Capital of the World. This initiative resulted in many firsts in video game history, playing a central role in arcade history, Ottumwa saw the birth of the Twin Galaxies Intergalactic Scoreboard and the U. S. National Video Game Team, two organizations that still exist today. These systems essentially provided arcade-only consoles where the video game ROM could be swapped easily to replace a game and this allowed easier development and replacement of games, but it also discouraged the hardware innovation necessary to stay ahead of the technology curve. In fact, several arcade systems such as Segas NAOMI board are arcade versions of home systems, the arcade industry entered a major slump in mid-1994. In the late 1990s, a bar opened in the new Crown Casino complex in Melbourne, Barcode was a games bar with the latest arcade games, the classics, pool tables, air hockey and pinball machines which you could play while consuming alcohol
10.
Nolan Bushnell
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Nolan Kay Bushnell is an American electrical engineer and businessman. He established Atari, Inc. and the Chuck E. Cheeses Pizza Time Theatre chain, Bushnell has started more than twenty companies and is one of the founding fathers of the video game industry. Nolan, who is co-founder and chairman of Brainrush, believes that Brainrush will be his biggest success, Nolan is credited with Bushnells Law, an aphorism about games easy to learn and difficult to master being rewarding. He was one of computer science students of the 1960s who played the historic Spacewar. The University of Utah was heavily involved in computer graphics research, Bushnell worked at Lagoon Amusement Park for many years in high school and college while living in his hometown of Ogden, Utah. He was particularly interested in the arcade games, where theme park customers would have to use skill and luck to ultimately achieve the goal. He liked the concept of getting people curious about the game and he would use his love for games and theme parks to help launch both Atari and Chuck E. Cheeses Pizza-Time Theaters. Bushnells first marriage was to Paula Rochelle Nielson with whom he has 2 children, Bushnells oldest child, Alissa, worked with him at uWink. His second marriage was to Nancy with whom he has 6 children, Bushnell was raised in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, but is no longer an active member. A1999 Time article described him as a lapsed Mormon and described him smoking a pipe, the Bushnells now live in Southern California. In June 2008 it was announced that Leonardo DiCaprio would portray Bushnell in the film Atari, Bushnell was featured in the documentary film Something Ventured as well as Atari, Game Over. In 1969, Bushnell and colleague Ted Dabney formed Syzygy with the intention of producing a Spacewar clone known as Computer Space, in order to keep the company alive while the machine was being prototyped, the two took on a route servicing broken pinball machines. Dabney built the prototype and Bushnell shopped it around, looking for a manufacturer and they made an agreement with Nutting Associates, a maker of coin-op trivia and shooting games, who produced a fiberglass cabinet for the unit that included a coin-slot mechanism. Computer Space was a failure, though sales exceeded $3 million. Bushnell felt that Nutting Associates had not marketed the game well and they instead incorporated under the name Atari, a reference to a check-like position in the game Go. They rented their first office on Scott Boulevard in Sunnyvale, California, contracted with Bally Manufacturing to create a driving game, Bushnell later bought out Dabney, who was forced out after Nolan told him he would transfer all the assets to another corporation and leave Ted with nothing. After Bushnell attended a Burlingame, California demonstration of the Magnavox Odyssey, Alcorn incorporated many of his own improvements into the game design, such as scoring and sound, and Pong was born. Pong proved to be popular, Atari released a large number of Pong-based arcade games over the next few years as the mainstay of the company
11.
Atari 2600
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The Atari 2600 is a home video game console by Atari, Inc. This format contrasts with the model of having non-microprocessor dedicated hardware. The console was sold as the Atari VCS, an abbreviation for Video Computer System. Following the release of the Atari 5200 in 1982, the VCS was renamed to the Atari 2600, after the units Atari part number, CX2600. The 2600 was typically bundled with two controllers, a conjoined pair of paddle controllers, and a game cartridge, initially Combat. Ted Dabney and Nolan Bushnell developed the Atari gaming system in the 1970s, originally operating under the name Syzygy, Bushnell and Dabney changed the name of their company to Atari in 1972. In 1973, Atari Inc. had purchased an engineering think tank called Cyan Engineering to research next-generation video game systems, and had been working on a prototype known as Stella for some time. Unlike prior generations of machines that use custom logic to play a number of games, its core is a complete CPU. It was combined with a RAM-and-I/O chip, the MOS Technology 6532, the first two versions of the machine contain a fourth chip, a standard CMOS logic buffer IC, making Stella cost-effective. Some later versions of the console eliminated the buffer chip, programs for small computers of the time were generally stored on cassette tapes, floppy disks, or paper tape. In 1976, Fairchild Semiconductor released their own CPU-based system, the Video Entertainment System. Stella was still not ready for production, but it was clear that it needed to be there were a number of me too products filling up the market. Atari Inc. didnt have the flow to complete the system quickly. Nolan Bushnell eventually turned to Warner Communications, and sold the company to them in 1976 for US$28 million on the promise that Stella would be produced as soon as possible. Key to the success of the machine was the hiring of Jay Miner. Once that was completed and debugged, the system was ready for shipping, the unit was originally priced at US$199, and shipped with two joysticks and a Combat cartridge. In a move to compete directly with the Channel F, Atari Inc. named the machine the Video Computer System, as the Channel F was at that point known as the VES, for Video Entertainment System. The VCS was also rebadged as the Sears Video Arcade and sold through Sears, Roebuck, another breakthrough for gaming systems was Ataris invention of a computer-controlled opponent, rather than the usual two-player or asymmetric challenges of the past
12.
Steve Wozniak
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Stephen Gary Steve Wozniak, nicknamed Woz, is an American inventor, electronics engineer, programmer, and technology entrepreneur who co-founded Apple Inc. He is known as a pioneer of the computer revolution of the 1970s and 1980s. Wozniak single-handedly developed the 1976 Apple I, which was the computer that launched Apple and he primarily designed the 1977 Apple II, while Jobs oversaw the development of its unusual case and Rod Holt developed the unique power supply. Steve Wozniak was born in San Jose, California, the son of Margaret Elaine and he is of Polish and Swiss-German ancestry. His father was from Bukovyna, Ukraine and his mother from German-Swiss background, the name on Wozniaks birth certificate is Stephan Gary Wozniak, but Steves mother said that she intended it to be spelled Stephen, and Steve is what he uses. Wozniak has been referred to frequently by the nickname Woz, The Wonderful Wizard of Woz, The Second Steve, or The Woz, the city of San Jose named a street Woz Way in his honour. In the early 1970s, Wozniak was also known as Berkeley Blue in the phone phreak community, in 1969, Wozniak returned to the Bay Area after being expelled from University of Colorado Boulder in his first year for hacking into the institutions computer system. During this time, Wozniak designed and built his Cream Soda computer with his friend Bill Fernandez and he later re-enrolled at De Anza College and transferred to University of California, Berkeley in 1971. Before focusing his attention on Apple, he was employed at Hewlett-Packard where he designed calculators and it was during this time that he befriended Steve Jobs. Steve Wozniak was introduced to Jobs by friend Bill Fernandez, who attended Homestead High School with Jobs in 1971, Jobs and Wozniak became friends when Jobs worked for the summer at Hewlett-Packard, where Wozniak too was employed, working on a mainframe computer. This was recounted by Wozniak in a 2007 interview with ABC News, of how, a friend said, you should meet Steve Jobs, because he likes electronics and he also plays pranks. In 1973, Jobs was working for arcade game company Atari, Inc. in Los Gatos and he was assigned to create a circuit board for the arcade video game Breakout. According to Atari co-founder Nolan Bushnell, Atari offered $100 for each chip that was eliminated in the machine, Jobs had little knowledge of circuit board design and made a deal with Wozniak to split the fee evenly between them if Wozniak could minimize the number of chips. Wozniak reduced the number of chips by 50, by using RAM for the brick representation, too complex to be fully comprehended at the time, the fact that this prototype also had no scoring or coin mechanisms meant Wozs prototype could not be used. Jobs was paid the full bonus regardless, Jobs told Wozniak that Atari gave them only $700 and that Wozniaks share was thus $350. Wozniak did not learn about the actual $5,000 bonus until ten years later, on June 29,1975 Wozniak tested his first working prototype, displaying a few letters and running sample programs. It was the first time in history that a character displayed on a TV screen was generated by a home computer. With the Apple I design, he and Jobs were largely working to impress members of the Palo Alto-based Homebrew Computer Club
