'Pong' is now half a century old

50 years ago today, Atari released pong It wasn't the first video game or the original take on virtual table tennis that would lead to two decades of lawsuits. The video game industry was started in Pong. Atari sold thousands of arcade cabinets. Sears sold about 150,000 units of the console you needed to play the game in the home version.

The success of Home and Pong gave Atari the resources and expertise to create the Atari 2600. The second- generation console sold more than 30 million units by the end of 2004. Allan Alcorn, who was 24 at the time and had no prior video game experience, was only supposed to be training for the project. If it weren't for pong, Nintendo wouldn't exist and a young Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak might not have created Apple.

Thank you for inspiring countless sequels and knockoffs, as well as the careers of an entire generation of video game designers, on your birthday!