The January weather in Nashua, New Hampshire, was cold and wingy.
Duke sat in the passenger seat of a rented Chevy, watching the windshield wipers struggle against a thin glaze of ice. Beside him, Nolan Bushnell was driving.
"You have to understand the things here, Duke," Nolan said, his breath fogging the glass. "Sanders Associates isn't a toy shop. They do DOD things. Radar jamming and spy stuff."
"I know," Duke said, pulling his collar up. "That's why we're here. The best things always come from the military."
Nolan laughed, a sharp sound that bounced around the car interior. "It's wild, isn't it? We're about to walk into a defense facility to talk about a game where you hit a dot with a line."
"Try to look serious."
They parked the Chevy in a lot filled with American-made sedans covered in road salt.
Inside, the air smelled of floor wax and ozone. They were issued visitor badges by a security guard.
"Mr. Baer is in Lab 4," the guard grunted. "Don't wander. If you see a door marked 'Classified,' turn around."
They walked down a long corridor lined with motivational posters about operational security. Duke felt a strange thrill.
He knew history in a way no one else did.
He knew that in the original timeline, the man they were about to meet Ralph Baer would license his invention to Magnavox.
They would release the Console Odyssey in 1972, a clumsy, silent machine that costed too much and sold too little.
Duke was here to save the video game industry from the stereo salesmen of Magnavox
Ralph Baer was waiting for them.
He wore a short-sleeved white shirt with a pocket protector, a tie that stopped halfway down his chest, and heavy-rimmed glasses.
He was a German Jewish refugee who had fled the Nazis in '38, served in US Army Intelligence, and was now one of the finest television engineers on the planet.
He looked at Nolan's messy hair and Duke's italian suit with a mixture of skepticism and curiosity.
"Mr. Duke," Baer said, his voice carrying a distinct, precise cadence. "And Mr. Bushnell. You've come a long way for a demonstration of 'TV Gaming.'"
"We've come a long way to meet the man who invented it," Duke said, extending a hand.
Baer shook it firmly. "Inventing it was the easy part. Convincing people that a television is for more than just watching... that has been the real struggle."
He gestured for them to follow him. The lab was cluttered with soldering irons, and tangles of wire.
In the center of a workbench sat a standard television set, and connected to it was a device that looked like it had been built in a garage.
It was encased in wood-grain vinyl. It had hefty, metallic switches and two rectangular controllers attached by thick cords.
The Brown Box.
(Picture)
"This," Baer said, patting the console gently, "is the culmination of three years of work. We call it the Brown Box."
He flipped a switch. The TV screen flickered from static to a stark, black background. Two luminous white squares appeared on either side of a dotted line that ran down the center.
"Mr. Bushnell," Baer said, handing Nolan a controller. "Since you are the enthusiast."
Nolan grabbed the controller and Baer took the other.
"Start," Baer said ready.
A third object, the ball appeared. It moved across the screen in a simple, linear trajectory. Nolan twisted his dial.
His paddle moved up.
The ball bounced back.
Duke watched, mesmerized.
To a modern eye, it was very simple. No sound, no color, no physics engine.
But in 1969, it was magic.
It was the first time a human being could manipulate the image on a television screen. It was the moment the viewer became the participant.
They played for five minutes. Nolan was grinning like a maniac, hooting every time he scored a point. Baer played with the calm, his face impassive.
"It works," Nolan breathed, setting the controller down. "It really works. The latency is zero. The signal is clean."
"Of course it's clean," Baer said, adjusting his glasses. "I'm an engineer, not a magician. The logic circuits are solid. We can do tennis, handball, volleyball... even a target shooting game with a light gun."
Duke stepped forward. "So why is it sitting in a lab in New Hampshire instead of in every living room in America?"
Baer's shoulders slumped slightly. The excitement of the game faded, replaced by the weight of corporate reality.
"The industry doesn't understand it," Baer admitted. "I had a deal with TelePrompTer. We had contracts drawn up. But their finances collapsed last month. Now... now I am talking to Bill Enders at RCA."
"RCA," Duke repeated, the name tasting like ash
(RCA: Radio Corporation of America).
"They are interested," Baer said defensively. "They have the distribution network and they can manufacture it."
"Ralph," Duke said, his voice dropping a little, "RCA is a old bloated company. I don´t know this Bill Enders, but he answers to a board of directors who think television is for selling soap."
"They will take this box, they will over-engineer it, they will charge a hundred dollars for it, and they will sell it only to people who own RCA televisions."
Baer looked at Duke sharp. "How do you know about it?"
"Because that's what big companies do. They strangle innovation with exclusivity. They want to sell TVs, not games. To them, this is just a fancy antenna."
He also knew cause several early videogames companies did that in an attempt to make their TV's more appealing.
Duke walked around the workbench, running a hand over the wood grain of the prototype.
"I'm not here to sell TVs, Ralph. I'm here to sell the experience."
Duke pulled up a stool and sat down. He motioned for Nolan to do the same.
"I run a company called Ithaca Productions. We make movies and I have just capitalized a new subsidiary." Duke pointed at Nolan.
"Nolan here is going to run the engineering. We're calling it Atari."
"Atari?" Baer asked. "It sounds Japanese."
"It's from the game Go," Nolan piped up. "It means you're about to win."
"Here is the offer," Duke said, locking eyes with Baer. "I don't want to license the Brown Box. I want you. I want you to come on as a founding partner of Atari."
Baer scoffed. "Mr. Duke, with all due respect, I have a pension here. You're are asking me to leave Sanders to join a startup with a name from a board game?"
"I'm asking you to be the father of an industry," Duke corrected. "But here is the twist, Ralph. Here is why RCA will fail and we will succeed. We aren't going to sell this to the home. Not yet."
Baer looked confused. "But... it's a TV game. It connects to the antenna terminals."
"It costs too much," Duke said bluntly. "To build this right now? With the casing, the controllers, the packaging? The retail price has to be over eighty or ninety dollars to make a margin. In this economy? Families won't buy it. It's too big of a risk for a toy."
Duke leaned in.
"We put it in a cabinet. A big, beautiful, wooden cabinet. We put a coin slot on the front. We charge twenty-five cents a game. We put them in bars. In bowling alleys. In college dorms."
Nolan's eyes went wide. He hadn't heard this part of the plan yet. "Like ping-ball machines?," he asked back.
"Exactly," Duke said. "We don't ask the customer to pay a hundred dollars. We ask them to pay a quarter. The barrier to entry is almost zero. We get them addicted to the fun while we build the brand."
"And once the cost of the chips comes down, in two, maybe three years then we release the home console. And by then, We'll target every kid in America."
Baer was silent. He was processing the logic. He was a pragmatic man. He knew the cost of components. He knew the resistance he was bound to face from consumers about the price tag.
"A coin-operated mechanism..." Baer mused. "It would require a robust casing to prevent vandalism."
"We can build that," Nolan said, leaning across the table, his energy syncing with Baer's caution.
"I know how to build the cabinets. I worked carnival games in college. We make it tough. Mr. Ralph, please think about it."
Baer looked at the Brown Box. He looked at the white square on the screen, still glowing.
He had spent three years trying to push a boulder up a hill. He had been laughed at by executives who thought television was unshakable.
He had even been ignored by his own bosses at Sanders with the sole exception of the CEO.
Now, two men had walked in from the cold and told him that his invention wasn't just an accessory. It was the main event.
"I cannot leave Sanders immediately," Baer said slowly. "I have responsibilities, projects with the goverment."
"Keep your job then," Duke said. "Consult for us. We'll buy the rights to the technology from Sanders, I'll offer them a lump sum that will make them happy. They don't want to be in the toy business anyway. They'll be happy to offload the patent."
"And the home unit?" Baer asked. "The Brown Box? It is my baby."
"It's our flagship," Duke promised. "We'll develop it in parallel. But we launch the arcade machine first."
"We generate the cash flow to make the home unit perfect with no exclusive deals with TV manufacturers."
Baer took off his glasses and cleaned them with a handkerchief. He looked at Nolan, seeing the hunger in the young man's eyes. Then he looked at Duke, seeing the certainty.
"Bill Enders at RCA is going to be very upset," Baer said.
'Bill Enders can go eat a dick,' Duke said on his mind while keeping quiet.
Baer put his glasses back on. A small, rare smile touched the corners of his mouth.
Baer turned to Nolan. "I would love to participate in making the arcade machine. I guess it will have no moving parts, since drunks will break moving parts."
Nolan grinned. "Let's work together."
"Ralph, welcome to Atari." Duke said.
Two hours later, the deal was struck in principle. Duke would handle the negotiations with Sanders Associates to acquire the license for the "TV Gaming" patents.
Since Sanders saw the tech as a distraction from their missile defense contracts, Duke knew he could get it for low, probably an upfront payment and a small royalty, completely cutting Magnavox from their opportunitty in the videogame ecosystem.
Duke and Nolan sat in a booth at a diner, a few miles from the facility. The windows were steamed up, and the air smelled of grease, coffee, and ketchup.
Nolan was sketching furiously on a paper placemat.
"We need a name for the machine," Nolan said, drawing a boxy, upright cabinet. "Something sci-fi. 'Computer Space'?"
"Too nerdy," Duke said, sipping black coffee. "Keep it simple. What's the sound the ball makes when it hits the paddle?"
"It's a square wave," Nolan said.
"Pong," Duke said. "Call it Pong."
Nolan stopped drawing. He looked at the word. "Pong. It's punchy. It sounds like a verb. 'Let's go play Pong.'"
"Exactly. But listen to me, Nolan. This is the important part."
Duke leaned over the table, his voice low.
"We are going to make a lot of money on the quarters. A scary amount of money. But don't get lost in the hardware. The hardware is just the delivery system."
"Delivery system for what?"
"For the software," Duke said. "Right now, it's ping-pong. Next year, it's spaceships. Then it's race cars."
(Apparently SEGA was the one who made motorcycle arcades with a game called Hang-on in 1985 with new hardware)
"Duke?" Nolan asked, tearing the placemat with the sketch off the table and folding it carefully into his pocket.
"Yeah?"
"If this works... if we actually get these machines into bars... do you think people will really pay a quarter to play a TV game?"
Duke thought about the arcades of the 80s, the esports arenas of the 2020s, the kids screaming at Fortnite on their screens.
"Dont worry about it Nolan," Duke said, standing up and throwing a five-dollar bill on the table. "They're going to empty their pockets for our games."
They walked out into the cold, the snow crunching under their boots.
---
The screening room at Paramount, was a wood-panneled room. In the center of the room sat several oversized leather armchairs, each equipped with a side table and a weighted glass of alcohol.
Robert Evans sat in the middle, his silhouette sharp against the glow of the projection booth. To his left was Gary Kurtz, still looking like he had some Utah sand in his hair. Duke took the chair on the right.
"Roll it, Charlie," Evans called out.
The lights dimmed to a total darkness. The flicker of the 35mm projector hummed behind them.
As the opening chords of "Everybody's Talkin'" filled the room, the screen burst to life with the image of Joe Buck played by Jon Voight.
(Jon Voight is Angelina Jolie's father)
He was a Texas dishwasher in a pristine, buckskin jacket, heading to New York City with a radio and a dream of becoming the greatest Gigolo the East Coast had ever seen.
The film wasn't the slick, glossy production the studio heads had expected.
Duke watched the screen as Joe Buck's optimism was slowly dismantled by the crushing reality of New York.
He wasn't the predator he thought he was, if anything, in the city, he was the prey.
Then came the turn. The introduction of Ratso, Dustin Hoffman, hunched over, limping, his skin looking like gray parchment, appeared on screen.
The relationship between the two men became the spine of the movie. It was a love story, though not in the way the censors feared.
It was the desperate, clawing affection of two drowning men holding onto each other in a cold lonely city.(No Diddy)
Duke watched the party sequence and then the quiet, devastating moments as the two outcasts squat together in a condemned, abandoned tenement building in a poor part of the city.
As the film reached its climax, Joe Buck, now broken and desperate, robs a man to get enough money to take a dying Ratso to Florida.
The final bus ride in which Ratso dies in his seat, his eyes staring at nothing, while Joe Buck puts his arm around him, trying to hide the tragedy from the other passengers as they cross the Florida state line.
When the screen finally went to black and the "Directed by John Schlesinger" credit rolled, there was only silence left.
The only sound was the cooling projector and the heavy breathing of three men who had just seen what they hoped would be a hit for Paramount.
The lights came up slowly.
Robert Evans reached for his glass, took a long pull of scotch, and stared at the empty white screen.
"This is the final cut," Evans whispered, his voice thick. "It's a goddamn great movie about loneliness."
Gary Kurtz leaned forward, rubbing his face. "The pacing... the way John used those quick-cut flashbacks. It's great."
Evans turned to Duke who was still silent, his tan looking unhealthy in the harsh light of the room. "What are your thoughs on it?"
"After watching it, I don't want to go to New York anytime soon," Duke said. "I still hold my belief that it'll be the biggest hit in the country."
Evans stood up, straightening his silk jacket. He looked at the projection booth and then back at Duke.
"I'm going to call Hoffman's agent," Evans said, "And I'm going to negotiate to sign him for a few movies."
(Apparently Hoffman got into a multi film contract with Paramount either after The Graduate or after Midnight Cowboy)
"So what's next for Ithaca?" Kurtz asked as they walked toward the parking lot. "You know before Ithaca hired me, I almost went to join the war in Vietnam."
"I'm heading back to the office," Duke said. "I have a meeting with a friend about a thing called 'Pong.' And then, I think I'm going to take a long look at projects for next year."
---
Next chapter in an hour
A movie recommendation 'The Florida Project'