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1971
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- Computer Space, the first coin-up arcade game
- Intel produces the first microprocessor, intended for
calculators. It was the Intel 4004, a 4-bit chip.
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1972
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- Nolan Bushnell founds Atari, and introduces the first Pong-machine in the Andy Caps bar in Sunnyvale,
California. It becomes the first arcade hit.
- Magnavox Odyssey, the world's first commercial home videogame:
Paddle hockey. It had 12 possibilities, was black and white with no
sound. All games were designed by Baer, and were spring offs of his
original ideas.
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1973
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- Robert Metcalfe develops the basis for the "local area
net" at Xerox PARC. He developed in some ways the Ethernet three
times: the first time as part of his research at the MIT (as part of
Project MAC), the second time at Xerox PARC, and the third time as
founder of 3Com.
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1974
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- Atari's Home Pong. It is a console which was connected to
the tv-set. Retailers were reluctant to sell the machine, because of the
ill success of the Odyssey.
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1975
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- Magnavox Odyssey 200 adds sound and scoring to the video game.
- The first personal computer is the MITS Altair 8800. The Altair
was also available as do-it-yourself kit, costed 375 dollars, and had a
memory of 256 bytes, no keyboard, display nor storage capacity.
- Bill Gates and Paul Allen introduce their first software product
for the Altair: a BASIC compiler.
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1976
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- Fairchild's Channel F, the first cartridge home video game
system. It was the first programmable game computer.
- Atari sold to Time Warner for $28 million.
- The first wordprocessor is developed by Altair programmer Michael
Shrayer: Electric Pencil.
- Death Race, a racing game in which credits can be earned by driving over
pedestrians, is causing a public discussion on violence in video games.
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1977
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First Videogame Crash (The Hardware Plague)
- Extreme amount of Home Pong clones, which are sold at fire
sale prices.
- Fairchild and RCA stop manufacturing home consoles. Clone
manufacturers stop as well. Atari survives.
- The beginning of the PC-era is dominated by the Apple II, the
Commodore Pet and the Tandy TRS-80. Apple is the most expensive, but
also the most popular.
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1978
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- Atari's VCS (2600). Comes with paddle and joystick controllers
and the Combat cartridge. A hundred thousand families has bought
the game Breakout. Space Invaders helped the sale of the Atari console. It was
sold until 1990.
- Magnavox releases the Odyssey2 to compete with Atari's VCS.
- Atari 400 and Atari 800 computers released.
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1979
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- Four ex-Atari programmers found Activision, the first videogame
software house. Activision makes no hardware, only cartridges, for the
Atari 2600 and subsequent platforms.
- The annual rate of new cartridge releases begins to double, from
a few dozen this year to over 500 in 1983. Asteroids is one of them.
- The most important reason for the succes of Apple is its
software. Apple dominates the PC industry from 1977 until 1983, under the
guidance of Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak and Mike Markulla.
- VisiCalc, a spreadsheet programme, and WordStar, a word
processor, were the first software hits for PC.
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