Al Alcorn Talks Jobs’ Early Days at Atari

July 20th, 2006 at 3:00 PM - News by Brad Cook

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 Jobsi 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 Atariis arcade games had technical troubles. Mr. Alcorn convinced Mr. Jobs to stop in Germany on his way to India, but the situation didnit go as well as hoped.

The details, along with information about Mr. Jobs and Mr. Wozniakis 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.