The Atari 2600 branded as the Atari Video Computer System or Atari VCS for short until November 1982, is a home video game console from Atari, Inc. Released on September 11, 1977, it is credited with popularizing the use of microprocessor-based hardware and games stored on ROM cartridges instead of dedicated hardware with games physically built into the unit; the 2600 was bundled with two joystick controllers, a conjoined pair of paddle controllers, a game cartridge: Combat, Pac-Man. The Atari VCS launched with nine low-resolution games in 2 KiB cartridges; the system found its killer app with its version of Taito's Space Invaders in 1980 and became successful, leading to the creation of Activision and other third-party game developers as well as competition from home console manufacturers Mattel and Coleco. By the end of its primary lifecycle in 1983–84, games for the 2600 were using more than four times the ROM of the launch titles with more advanced visuals and gameplay than the system was designed for, such as Pitfall! and its scrolling sequel Pitfall II: Lost Caverns.

Atari invested in two games for the 2600, Pac-Man and E. T. the Extra-Terrestrial, the latter being a commercial failure that contributed to the video game crash of 1983 which ended the market relevance of the 2600. Warner sold off the home console division of Atari to Commodore CEO Jack Tramiel. In 1986, the new Atari Corporation under Tramiel released a lower-cost version of the 2600 and the backwards-compatible Atari 7800, but these were not enough to turn things around, it was Nintendo that led the recovery of the industry. Atari ended production of the Atari 2600 on January 1, 1992. Across the system's lifetime, an estimated 30 million units were sold. Atari was founded by Nolan Bushnell and Ted Dabney in 1972, their first major product was one of the first successful arcade games. By 1975, Atari had released a Pong home console, competing against Magnavox, the only other major producer of home consoles at the time. Bushnell recognized, the limitation of custom logic burned onto the circuit board.

Because development of a console cost at least US$100,000 and time to complete, had only about a three-month shelf life before becoming outdated, it was a risky business model. By 1974, Atari had acquired Cyan Engineering, an electronics company founded by Steve Mayer and Larry Emmons, started Atari's Grass Valley Think Tank, where they developed new ideas for arcade games. Due to Bushnell's concern about single-game consoles, the Grass Valley team started working on a home console with multi-game support. Mayer and Emmons determined that a home console would require newly invented microprocessors to support multiple games, but such microprocessors cost US$100–300 at the time, far outside the range that their market would support. In September 1975, Chuck Peddle of MOS Technology created a low-cost replacement for the Motorola 6800, the MOS Technology 6502, introduced it at the 1975 Wescon trade show in San Francisco. Mayer and Ron Milner attended the show, met with Peddle, invited Peddle to Cyan's headquarters to discuss using MOS's microprocessors for a game console.

Mayer and Milner negotiated a deal for the 6502 chips at US$8 each, sufficient to begin development of a console. Cyan and MOS enlisted Synertek, a semiconductor manufacturer whose co-founder, Bob Schreiner, was good friends with Peddle, to act as a second source for the 6507. By December 1975, Atari hired Joe Decuir to help design the first prototype, codenamed "Stella". A second prototype was completed by March 1976 with the help of Jay Miner, who had managed to fit the entire Television Interface Adaptor, to send graphics and audio to the television display, into a single chip; the second prototype included the 6507, the TIA, a ROM cartridge slot and adapter, each cartridge holding a ROM game image. Believing that Stella would be a success, Bushnell acquired the entire Grass Valley Think Tank and relocated them to Atari's new headquarters in Sunnyvale, California by mid-1976, putting Steve Mayer in charge of the project. Bushnell feared that once this unit was released, competitors would try to copy it, preemptively arranged with all integrated chip manufacturers who were interested in the games market to deny sales to his competitors.

Fairchild Semiconductor introduced its Fairchild Channel F home console in November 1976, beating Atari to the market with ROM cartridge technology. This pressured Atari to finish Stella more but the company lacked the funds to do so. Bushnell considered taking Atari public but instead sold the company to Warner Communications for US$28 million. By 1977, the product had advanced far enough to brand it as the "Atari Video Computer System" and engage Atari's programmers to develop games for it; the unit was showcased in mid-1977 at the Summer Consumer Electronics Show with plans for retail release in October. However, Atari encountered production problems during its first batch, its testing was complicated by the use of cartridges; the consoles were shipped to retailers in November 1977. At release in September 1977, the unit was priced at US$199, shipped w

Seelig Bartel Wise, sometimes known as Bushie Wise, was a cotton and soybean farmer and businessman from Clarksdale, who from 1964 to 1968 was the first Republican in the Mississippi State Senate since Reconstruction. Wise was a captain in the United States Army during World War II, he graduated from the Chinese Language School in Berkeley and earned a Bachelor of Science degree in Agriculture from Mississippi State University in Starkville. For a time, he was a special agent for the Federal Bureau of Investigation, his family farm, owned with his brothers, was located at Jonestown in Coahoma County near Clarksdale in northwestern Mississippi. Wise was a Southern Baptist, had been married twice, he had one son, three grandchildren. In 1963, Wise ran for the state Senate seat encompassing Coahoma and Quitman counties on the Republican ticket headed by gubernatorial nominee Rubel Phillips of Corinth and Jackson and the candidate for lieutenant governor, Stanford Morse, an outgoing state senator and lawyer from Gulfport on the Mississippi Gulf Coast.

Democratic Governor Ross Barnett was term-limited in the 1963 election. While Phillips and Morse were defeated by the Democrats Paul B. Johnson, Jr. and Carroll Gartin Wise won his race. Buoyed by the Barry Goldwater landslide in Mississippi in 1964, Wise ran unsuccessfully in 1966 against the veteran Democrat Jamie L. Whitten for Mississippi's 2nd congressional district seat. In 1967, though Paul Johnson was ineligible to seek reelection as governor, a provision that has since been changed, Rubel Phillips again carried the Republican nomination for governor, but he was handily defeated by the Democrat U. S. Representative John Bell Williams of Mississippi's 3rd congressional district. By this time, Clarke Reed of Greenville had replaced the original chairman of the Mississippi Republican Party, Wirt Yerger, an insurance agent in Jackson. Wise lost his Senate seat after a single term, as did two freshmen Republican members of the Mississippi House of Representatives, Lewis Leslie McAllister, Jr. a businessman from Meridian and Tuscaloosa and Charles K. Pringle, a lawyer from Biloxi.

In 1969, the administration of U. S. President Richard M. Nixon named Wise the state director of the Farmers Home Administration, an agency of the United States Department of Agriculture, he headed the Mississippi office of the Agricultural Stabilization and Soil Conservation Service. Wise served on the board of directors of the Mississippi Blue Cross Blue Shield Association and was the board president of the Northwest Mississippi Regional Medical Center, a 195-bed hospital in Clarksdale, he co-founded the Mississippi Hospital Association of Governing Boards. Wise died at the age of ninety-one at the Mississippi Baptist Medical Center in Jackson

James Murray was a British loyalist who lived in North Carolina and Boston prior to the American Revolution escaping from Boston to settle in Halifax, Nova Scotia. He was one of the few loyalists who lived in both the South and the North prior to the Revolution, making the letters he wrote valuable. Murray was born on August 1713 in Unthank in Scotland, he was son of John Murray and Anne Murray, who married in April 1712. Among his siblings was John Murray of Norwich and Elizabeth Murray Campbell and Inman. Both John and Elizabeth were painted by John Singleton Copley. Another sister, Barbara Murray, was married to Thomas Clark, a merchant, was the mother of Thomas Clark and Ann Clark, his paternal grandfather was John Murray of Bowhill. In 1735, Murray emigrated from Scotland to the Province of North Carolina; when in North Carolina, he became a member of the North Carolina General Assembly and president of the Governor's Council. He established the Point Repose Plantation at Wilmington, North Carolina.

Four of his six children with his first wife died on the plantation. After being thwarted in his efforts to become governor, Murray moved to Boston in 1765 and established various businesses. Prior to moving, Murray sent his oldest daughter Dorothy to Boston to live with his sister Elizabeth, he turned the operation of the plantation over to his nephew, Thomas Clark, who became a Brigadier general in the Continental Army. In 1778, who remained loyal to the British Crown, evacuated Boston and moved north to Halifax, Nova Scotia. In 1761, he married Barbara Bennet. Barbara was the daughter of Dorothy Bennet, her mother was the half-sister Cuthbert Collingwood. Together, they were the parents of: Dorothy "Dolly" Murray, who married Rev. John Forbes in 1769. Elizabeth Murray, who married Edward Hutchinson Robbins, the Lieutenant Governor of Massachusetts, in 1785. Murray was buried in the Old Burying Ground in Halifax. Through his eldest daughter Dorothy, he was the grandfather of diplomat John Murray Forbes.

James Murray at Find a Grave