Ted Dabney

Samuel Frederick "Ted" Dabney Jr. (May 2, 1937 – May 26, 2018) was an American electrical engineer, and the co-founder, alongside Nolan Bushnell, of Atari, Inc. He is recognized as developing the basics of video circuitry principles that were used for Computer Space and later Pong, one of the first and most successful arcade games.

Education and early career Dabney was born in San Francisco, California, to Irma and Samuel Frederick Dabney. His parents divorced while he was young and he was subsequently raised by his father. One of several schools that he attended was John A. O'Connell High School of Technology, where he studied trade drafting, which led to him getting a job with the California Department of Transportation while still a teenager. He eventually got his high school diploma from San Mateo High School; Dabney credited a math teacher named Walker there who got him interested in the electronics and computing areas. He was able to leave the Corps as he had been admitted into San Francisco State University, but since he did not have the funds to support his education, he instead took a job with Bank of America based on his electronics experience, where he kept the Electronic Recording Machine, Accounting operational. Bushnell, prior to joining Ampex, had come up with the idea of making a carnival-like pizza place with animatronics and games, and discussed this idea with Dabney. After seeing a computer system at the Stanford Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, the two came up with the concept of using a smaller computer or video systems, adding coin slots, and allowing people to pay to play games on this. Their first product was Computer Space, inspired by having seen Spacewar! running at various computer laboratories. Dabney created a motion system using a video circuit made up of cheap analog and digital components of a standard television set rather than acquire an expensive computer, while Bushnell designed its cabinet and worked with Nutting Associates to manufacture the game at scale. Under Bushnell's direction, Alcorn used Dabney's video circuit concept to create the programming for Atari's next game, Pong. Dabney constructed the coin slot mechanism portion of the cabinet. Once their one-off version proved successful, they ramped up production for scale, with Dabney overseeing the manufacturing process. Pong became the first successful arcade video game. Bushnell also had assigned Dabney a lower-level position in Atari and did not include him in high-level meetings.

The Dabneys lost their Lake County home in the August 2016 Clayton Fire, relocating to nearby Clearlake. A GoFundMe account was set up to help the Dabneys resettle, but it was cancelled after Dabney confirmed that he didn't need it. Dabney was diagnosed with esophageal cancer in late 2017, and opted against treatment after being told he had eight months to live.

Dabney admitted he cut almost all ties to the video game industry and had minimal involvement with it in his later years. He said about the only involvement in it was when he'd watch his grandchildren play their games, and he'd tell them "Grandpa helped make these games, and they'd look at me like I'm crazy, because if I helped invent video games, why wasn't I more known like Walt Disney or Steve Jobs?" In March 2018, members of the Smithsonian Institution interviewed Dabney for an oral history from his point of view, which ran for eight hours at his home in California.

He died on May 26, 2018, in his Clearlake home from complications from the cancer.