Atari

"Well Simon, let's talk about the company you want to set up. Do you have a name? What are you going to do?" Alexander asked the most important question and the reason the siblings gathered today. It was time for Simon to tell them about his plan.

"The name of my new company will be Atari. I will essentially create games. I have the idea to create an arcade machine that you can place in bars, shopping malls, entertainment venues or even supermarkets. I am pretty sure I can take on the creative part of the company and you helped me with the management team for the company. The candidate for the technical director is something I will figure out in the coming days, but the technical difficulty is not that high to be honest. As long as we do a good job with the patent issues I am confident we will create a great company."

When Simon mentioned patents Caroline was already getting excited.

"Don't worry Simon, when it comes to patent law I got your back. As long as your claim is valid I can guarantee you everything will go well. Even if I can't figure it out, I will ask for the help of my teacher at worst."

Simon was quite relieved with the legal matters of the company. He stayed another hour to discuss everything on the legal side with his siblings. They confirmed that all the team members would arrive in two weeks in New York, which left Simon some time to gather the technical personnel for the new company. As a person with knowledge about the future he was already thinking about a legend of the industry as his technical director. He is sure to recreate the glory of Atari and prevent the same destination as in his previous life.

Atari, when it was first founded, released a game called Ping Pong, which was a video game that simulated table tennis. The page was very simple, and no one would have even looked at it in the 21st century, but it was very popular in 1972. Bars across the United States were making a lot of money that year, but it was also the first time for Atari's founder to start a business, and he made the most common mistake - not registering a patent.

By the time they reacted, various shoddy table tennis games had begun to appear on the market in large quantities. But at this point, table tennis could no longer be saved. Atari decided to develop a single-player ball game, Breakout.

However, unlike table tennis, there are many bricks on the game interface of Breakout. At the same time, the trajectory of the ball is more complex, and the algorithm requirements are also higher, which requires high computing and storage requirements.

In the 1970s, chips had just been developed and their computing power was very low. Whether it was industrial computers, commercial computers or other industries, they relied on stacking chips to improve their computing power. The Breakout arcade machine developed by Atari's internal engineers required more than 150 chips, and each chip costs thirty or forty dollars. The cost is so high that no bar will be willing to buy it.

Therefore, Atari initiated an internal reward. Whoever can successfully develop a Breakout arcade machine with less than 100 chips will receive a reward of US$900. On this basis, every time 10 more chips are reduced, the reward will be 900 US dollars. Add another $1,000 reward.

This award was a huge bonus in the early 1970s. Atari engineers worked very hard, but after several months of hard work, the most successful group only reduced the number of chips to 30, but the arcade machine with 120 chips , the cost is still too high. Jobs was also interested in the bonus, but he was just an ordinary technician and didn't understand chips, so he found his friend Woz who was working at HP at the time.

Jobs told Woz: The design must be completed within 4 days and use as few chips as possible. They split the bonus for completing the work half and half.

For the next four days, the two worked almost without sleep, with Jobs creating prototypes and testing and Woz handling the technical aspects.

Unexpectedly, these two people really made this "Breakout" in 4 days, which can be recorded in the history of the game forever, and the entire game only used 44 chips!

You know, although Atari was not a big company back then, the success of table tennis had already allowed it to have dozens of technical staff. However, the project that so many people had not completed for several months was lost to Woz 4. It was done in a day and only used 44 chips. Woz's technical talent is so high that it is very rare in the entire Silicon Valley. In fact, Jobs' first Apple computer two years later was also designed by Woz. Otherwise, the cost would not be reduced at all.

Simon knew that Woz just stopped studying at the University of Colorado and returned home, because his parents couldn't afford the out-of-state tuition anymore. He would soon get to know Steve Jobs in 1971 and join Hewlett Packard. Simon's plan was to visit the 20 year old Woz and invite him to his company as the technical director. For many people this would seem insane, letting a 20 year old without a degree take the technical leadership of a new company, but Simon knew just how much talent Woz was hiding. He booked a plane ticket two days later and wanted to bring Woz to New York before Christmas.

When sitting on the plane towards Berkley, California, Simon was sure to make Atari the global leader in the game field. But before that he needed to make sure to return to New York before Christmas or his family would probably really feel uncomfortable this time.