Justin Posted December 23, 2015 Report Share Posted December 23, 2015 Here's a fascinating article about some colleagues of mine that I came across on Forbes' Facebook page. Gene is a lifelong friend and Ron Smith is a wonderfully talented engineer who first designed the video game cartridge input mechanism, the cartridges for Fairchild Channel-F, the Activision game cartridges, and the tooling for the Apple IIc. Ron also consulted with Nintendo and testified during patent litigation pertaining to Nintendo's exclusionary practices. I had the pleasure of working with both of them on a project pertaining to the democratization of VR and AR. The article is about these men, plus other world-changing innovators that contributed to the advent of the games industry including Jerry Lawson (an awesome fellow), Greg Reyes, Larry Haskell and Wallace Kirschner, and is essentially about Gene's Fairchild presentation that I have. In 2004 I had the Fairchild presentation scanned and archived along with Gene's inception of the 2600 idea and strategy presented to Nolan Bushnell after PONG. I will be publishing these documents to the Atari I/O website in .PDF form. Incidentally, it was Gene Landrum who developed the Chuck E. Cheese concept into its recognizable form which you can read more about here and here. This article is a fantastic read, full of lots of great history, pictures, and more. I hope people see the importance of this article and appreciate the significant contributions of the people who made this industry happen. The Untold Story Of The Invention Of The Game Cartridge How a forgotten company's 1970's technical breakthrough launched a Billion-dollar business and helped spawn a new creative medium: http://www.fastcompany.com/3040889/the-untold-story-of-the-invention-of-the-game-cartridge Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RickR Posted December 23, 2015 Report Share Posted December 23, 2015 WOW! Great read here for history buffs. Thank you for posting it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MaximumRD Posted December 23, 2015 Report Share Posted December 23, 2015 A great article with info rarely talked about, at least in comparison to other retro video game discussion. GREAT to see this important part of cartridge history preserved. I am Rob aka MaximumRD aka OldSchoolRetroGamer and THIS is my world http://about.me/maximumrd "For you, the day Bison graced your village was the most important day of your life. But for me, it was Tuesday." - M. Bison Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Yo-Yo Posted December 24, 2015 Report Share Posted December 24, 2015 That was a great read for sure. Its nice to see mainstream publications put out accurate stories that detailed about the origins of gaming. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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