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Al Alcorn Talks Jobs' Early Days at Atari

Al Alcorn Talks Jobs' Early Days at Atari

by , 3:30 PM EDT, July 21st, 2006

Al Alcorn, co-founder of Atari with Nolan Bushnell, recently spoke with PodTech.net about the early days of the company, including Apple co-founder Steve Jobs' time there. Mr. Jobs was an 18-year-old college dropout at the time and Mr. Alcorn hired him despite his lack of a technical education.

According to Mr. Alcorn, Mr. Jobs supposedly had his buddy Steve Wozniak doing his work for him, an arrangement that Atari tolerated. After six months, however, Mr. Jobs quit to travel to India and meet with his guru, which turned into an opportunity for Mr. Alcorn when a company in Germany selling one of Atari's arcade games had technical troubles. Mr. Alcorn convinced Mr. Jobs to stop in Germany on his way to India, but the situation didn't go as well as hoped.

The details, along with information about Mr. Jobs and Mr. Wozniak's failed attempt to convince Atari to take on the Apple II, can be found in the podcast of the interview, which was conducted at the recent California Extreme 2006 classic arcade games show in San Jose, Calif.

Observer Comments

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Close Name:macslut Posts: 61 Joined: 03 Sep 2004
Fri Jul 21, 2006 9:03 pm Subject: Al Alcorn and California Extreme experience

I attended California Extreme this year with PodTech.net. I've been going for a few years now (my high score has been on the Star Wars game for 4 years!).

This is an annual event in San Jose and is really a lot of fun. Previously I had been spending the whole time playing classic games at the show, but this time it was really cool going to the panel discussions.

Al Alcorn was incredibly nice and approachable. He had a lot of other interesting stories regarding Atari. There were also creators of other classic games (like Robotron).

It sounds geeky, but it was really fascinating to see how these games were developed. I highly recommend attending next year!


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