50 Year Anniversary of the First Video Game

Pong was the world’s first widely played video game. A young programmer working for a startup company designed the game in 1972, and he was pretty sure it would fail. In fact, Pong was a huge success. The overwhelming popularity of Pong sparked the rise of Atari as the first successful video game company. Listen to learn about the circumstances behind Pong’s creation and release and hear how its creator developed the game’s distinctive beeping sounds.