Let’s take you back exactly 50 years, Alistair, to May 1973 and the night you installed the first official Atari Pong machine in the UK.
I think it was a Friday. We put the machine in the Strathdon Hotel in Nottingham about 3 o’clock in the afternoon. I lived in Castle Donington, 15 miles away, so I drove home and didn’t think any more of it. The phone rang at 7.30pm that night and the manager said our machine had packed up. I thought, “Bloody hell, I’ve got no technical expertise,” but I drove back to the hotel and took the back off the machine. The cashbox was jammed full of 10p pieces!
Result! Any idea how much money the machine had taken?
It wasn’t a big cash box but I bet there were a hundred coins in there. Al [Alcorn, creator of Pong] told me the exact same thing happened when they first put a Pong machine in Andy Capp’s Tavern [in Sunnyvale, California]. I sat there for the rest of the night, supping a beer, watching people play the machine and thought, “They’re putting money right into my pocket” [laughs]. I was euphoric!
What kind of people were playing Pong?
It really was a cross-section, from teenagers to people in their 40s. It was easy to play and people were curious. Everyone wanted to try this new thing. And you have to know, we changed the name to Ping. I mean, we couldn’t call it Pong, because of the meaning of the word in England!
After that night, you clearly smelt an opportunity. Did you import more machines?
We’d flown in a few samples in late-May 1973 for photographic purposes, before we brought in an order of 100 machines in June.
Atari was selling machines in the US for around $1,000 each, so that’s some serious money…
