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Pong
Nolan Bushnell hires young engineer Al Alcorn to design a car-driving game. Bushnell soon realizes this is too ambitious for the time and pivots, having Alcorn design a version of Ping Pong instead. The game was tested in bars in California, where it was a hit. Pong would revolutionize the arcade industry and launch the modern video game era. -
La Faim (Hunger) debuts
Filmmaker Peter Foldes & computer scientist Nestor Burtnyk make short film about food inequality. With animation style of key frame animation, Burtnyk designed a program in which the computer filled in the gaps, producing an effect that made the images seem to glide from one to another. La Faim would win many awards and an Academy Award nomination. -
Apple 1
Built by Steve Wozniak - The Apple I was Apple's first product. Steve Jobs came up with the idea of selling it. A quick success for its unique design, the Apple I was an innovative machine and was the kickoff for the formidable company we know today. -
Speak & Spell
Created by Paul Breedlove and small team at Texas Instruments. A learning aid for children, it marked the first electronic duplication of the human vocal tract on a single integrated circuit. Using linear predictive coding to formulate a mathematical model of the human vocal tract and predict a speech sample based on previous input. It transformed digital information processed through a filter into synthetic speech and could store more than 100 seconds of linguistic sounds. -
Fairlight CMI
By Kim Ryrie and David Vogel (from technology licensed from engineer Tony Furse) - Initially designed as a synthesis workstation, it was the instrument's sampling technology that turned shook the industry. After a handful of incarnations it would offer 16-bit sampling with a full 100 kHz sampling rate, etc. There was also FFT synthesis and waveform editing via combo of light pen and waveform drawing screen. It helped shape pop music today.
