Nolan Bushnell BUILT Gaming and Kept Almost None of It

NARRATION: He built the industry that made billions and once paid Steve Jobs's salary. Yet Nolan Bushnell kept almost none of it.

He grew up in Utah, hooked on pinball and a game flickering on a college computer.

That flicker became an obsession. In 1972, he and engineer Ted Dabney founded Atari.

The early machines barely worked, and money was thin.

So he handed engineer Allan Alcorn a test project: Pong, a dot, two paddles.

Pong swallowed quarters within days. The video game era had begun.

To move faster, he hired a teenager named Steve Jobs, who pulled in Steve Wozniak for Breakout.

By 1976, he sold Atari to Warner Communications for about twenty-eight million dollars.

Then it slipped away. By 1978, Warner had pushed him out of his own company.

He founded Chuck E. Cheese next, the man who started an industry but never ruled it.

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