Atari Corporation
Stub! please expand!
Atari is a computer entertainment brand name. Orginally founded by Nolan Bushnell and Ted Dabne in 1972.
See Atari machines for a list of the computers and consoles manufactured by Atari.
History
- Pong, VCS2600
- Time Warner
- 8 Bit years
- Sam Tramiel years and the ST series
- Move from PC's back to consoles in 1992, subsequent failure in that market
- Sale to JTS
- Owned by Infogrames
1972 created Nolan Bushnell and Ted Dabney in California (the USA) the company Atari. The term "Atari" was taken thereby to the vocabulary of the Go-play; later the Logo in form of the representative Japanese mountain Fuji was added.
1975 Steve job and Steve Wozniak, the later joint founders of Apple computer, worked for a short time in Atari. Together they created an improved Pong console (with a minimum of transistors) and developed the video game Breakout.
1984 Under Jack Tramiels & Shiraz Shivji, the "father" of the Commodore 64, the Atari ST was developed in a record time of only five months, and by Jan 1985 was ready for CES in Las Vegas in form of the Atari 130ST and 520ST. In April, the distribution of the first 520ST started, which became in the next years the best seller and most used among the professional musician.
1993 Atari began shipping the game console Jaguar. However, the sales were below expectations and development costs consumed all the reserves. On 30 July 1996 the JTS corporation, a manufacturer of hard disks, took over all shares of Atari.
1998 Hasbro Interactive took over JTS corporation for five million US Dollar.
2001 French game manufacturer Infogrames took over Atari from Hasbro. Since the second quarter 2003, Infogrames changed it's name to Atari.