Nolan Bushnell

At 81 years old, Nolan Bushnell physical status not available right now. We will update Nolan Bushnell's height, weight, eye color, hair color, build, and measurements.

Nolan Kay Bushnell (born February 5, 1943) is an American businessman and electrical engineer.

Atari, Inc. was founded by Joseph Atari, Inc.

And the Chuck E. Cheese's Pizza Time Theatre chain.

Bushnell has been inducted into the Video Game Hall of Fame and the Consumer Electronics Association Hall of Fame, as well as the United Nations Restaurant News "Innovator of the Year" award and was named one of Newsweek's "50 Men Who Changed America." Bushnell has founded more than 20 businesses and is one of the original creators of the video game business.

He is on the board of Anti-Aging Games.

He founded Brainrush, an educational software company that uses video game technology in educational programs. Nolan is praised for Bushnell's Law, an aphorism about games that is both educational and difficult to master, which is praised.

Personal life

Bushnell was born in Clearfield, Utah, in a middle-class family who were members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in 1943. In 1961, he studied engineering and then later business at Utah State University, then moved to industry. He went to the University of Utah's (U of U) College of Engineering, where he obtained a bachelor's degree in electrical engineering in 1964. He was a founder of the Pi Kappa Alpha fraternity. He was one of many computer science students of the 1960s who participated in the historic Space War. On DEC mainframe computers, the game will be played.

Paula Rochelle Nielson, his first wife, married in 1966 and had two children; in 1969, the couple moved to California; They divorced in 1975, just before Warner Communication's purchase of Atari. He married Nancy Nino, with whom he had six children, about 1977. He also used his earnings from selling Atari to Warner to buy James Folger's former coffee magnate in Woodside, California.

Despite being a Latter-day Saint (or Mormon) in his youth, by the time of his first divorce, he had forsaken Mormonism, often being described as a "lapsed Mormon." Since being involved in a discussion about the Bible's interpretation with a scholar at the University of U's Institute of Religion in college, he said he stopped practicing the faith.

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Business career

When attending college, Bushnell worked at Lagoon Amusement Park for many years. He was made manager of the games department two seasons after they were launched. He became interested in arcade electro-mechanical games like Chicago Coin's racing game Speedway (1969), helping customers maintain the equipment while still learning how it worked, increasing his knowledge of how the game industry works. He was also interested in the Midway arcade games, in which theme park visitors will have to use skill and luck to finally achieve the goal and win the prize. He liked the idea of making people curious about the game and then compel them to pay the fee in order to participate.

He worked for various companies, including Litton Guidance and Control Systems, Hadley Ltd, and the U.S. Industrial Engineering Department, among others, while in college. He developed Campus Company, a four-university advertising firm, that sold blotters and sold billboards around a calendar of events. Encyclopedia Americana was also available in bookstores.

Bushnell had migrated to California with the hopes of being hired by Disney, but the firm was not involved in the common practice of recruiting fresh college graduates. Rather, Bushnell landed a job as an electrical engineer with Ampex. Ted Dabney, a fellow employee at Ampex, and discovered they shared common interests. Bushnell demonstrated his creation of electronic games with Dabney, and brought Dabney to the Stanford Artificial Intelligence Laboratory to see him Spacewar.

Bushnell and Dabney founded Syzygy in 1969 with the intention of building a Spacewar clone known as Computer Space. Dabney produced the kit, but Bushnell shopped it around, looking for a manufacturer. They signed an agreement with Nutting Associates, a coin-op trivia and shooting game manufacturer, that made a fiberglass cabinet for the unit that included a coin-slot mechanism.

Despite revenue exceeding $3 million, computer space was a commercial failure. Bushnell argued that Nutting Associates had not properly promoted the game and that the game would be licensed to a larger company. Since the target audience would inevitably be drunken bar patrons, Bushnell knew that the next game they created would be simpler and not require users to read instructions on the cabinet.

Bushnell and Dabney started on their own in 1972, and discovered that the word "syzygy" was in use; Bushnell has said at various times that it was used by a Mendocino hippie commune and by a roofing company; They were instead introduced under the name Atari, a reference to a check-like position in the game Go (which Bushnell has referred to as his "favorite game of all time").

Engineer Allan Alcorn, engineer, and engineer Allan Alcorn, their first employee, hired Bally Manufacturing to produce a driving game. Bushnell set out to create a game based on Chicago Coin's Speedway, which at the time was the most popular electro-mechanical game at his arcade.

Following Bushnell's appearance at the Magnavox Odyssey in Burlingame, California, he gave Alcorn the opportunity to convert the Magnavox tennis game into a coin-op version as a testing project. He told Alcorn that he was making the game for GE in order to compel him, but in truth, he wanted to simply delete the game. Pong was born after Alcorn made some of his own changes to the game layout, such as the ball speeding up the longer the game went, etc. Pong was extremely popular; Atari introduced a number of Pong-based arcade video games over the next two years as the company's mainstay. After Pong, Bushnell, and Dabney's debut, there was a disappointing loss: Dabney felt he was being pushed to the side by Bushnell, while Bushnell felt Dabney was holding the company back from greater financial growth. In 1973, Bushnell bought Dabney's Atari for $250,000.

Bushnell discretely asked Joe Keenan to create near-copies of Atari's games in order to get more arcade games to market and override exclusivity limitations that coin-op game developers had set. Even with Kee's production, Atari had trouble meeting arcade game demand, and by 1974, Atari was facing financial difficulties due in part to the arcade game industry's fierce rivalry. In September 1974, Bushnell converted Kee Games into Atari, a wholly original arcade game from Kee. Tank was a hit on arcades and helped Atari's finances grow. Keenan became president of Atari and oversaw its operations, while Bushnell retained his CEO role.

Atari entered the consumer electronics market in 1975, with its home Pong consoles first introduced in 1975. Atari continued to produce derivatives of its existing arcade games for dedicated home consoles until 1977. During this period, Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak, former Atari workers, approached Bushnell about investing in the Apple I, which was made from borrowed parts from Atari and with technical assistance from Atari employees. They initially sent the sketch to Bushnell and Atari, but Bushnell wanted Atari to concentrate on arcade and home consoles. Jobs gave Bushnell a one-third stake in their budding firm Apple Inc. for $50,000; Bushnell remarked in hindsight, "I was so savvy, I said no." When I'm not crying, it's kind of fun to think about it." In 1977, Bushnell opened the first Pizza Time Theatre in San Jose as a way for Atari to sell its arcade games.

Bushnell realized that the costs of designing both arcade and home consoles with limited shelf life were prohibitive, and pushed Atari's engineers at Cyan Engineering toward a programmable home console. The Atari Video Computer System, Atari VCS, was eventually released in 1977 as the Atari Video Computer System, or Atari VCS, and later known as the Atari 2600. However, the Fairchild Channel F, the first home console to use game cartridges, was released in November 1976 before Atari had completed its layout. Bushnell knew they needed to expedite the Atari VCS's construction. He declined to become a public company first, but after being initially considering becoming a public company, he eventually sought a buyer. Warner Communications, hoping to raise their own floundering media brands, has agreed to purchase Atari for $28 million, with Bushnell personally receiving US$15 million in November 1976. Warner invested a significant amount of money into the Atari VCS to ensure it was completed early next year and released in September 1977.

Atari's own production made Atari's first year of Atari VCS sales modest and limited. Although many of the first games were arcade conversions of Atari arcade games, the second wave of games in 1983 were more abstract and difficult to promote. Warner recruited Ray Kassar, a former Burlington Industries vice president, to assist with Atari's marketing. Kassar's success continued with advertising and marketing in 1978, positioning the Atari VCS for a longer sales period at the end of the year. However, Bushnell expressed reservations about Kassar's plans and feared that they had produced too many units to be sold at a board meeting, and reiterated this position at the end of the year. As he feared rising competition would make the VCS's ageing tech specs obsolete, Bushnell suggested that funds be used in R&D for the development of a new, technologically advanced console. As a result of Kassar's marketing and the success of Taito's Space Invaders at the arcade, Bushnell's tremblings never emerged. Atari VCS sales were never realized. Both Warner Communications and Bushnell decided that he was no longer a good leader for the company, removing him as CEO and Chairman in early 1979. Warner gave Bushnell the opportunity to continue as a producer and creative consultant, but Bushnell declined. Bushnell negotiated the rights to Pizza Time Theatre from Atari for $500,000. Keenan replaced Bushnell but was forced to resign as Atari's CEO a few months later, with Kassar appointed as Atari's CEO by mid-1979.

While at Atari, Bushnell purchased Pizza Time Theatre from Warner Communications in 1977. Bushnell first introduced it as a place where kids could go and eat pizza and play video games, and it would also act as a distribution channel for Atari games. The Pizza Time Theatre at Chuck E. Cheese had animated animals that performed music as entertainment. Bushnell had always wanted to work for Walt Disney but was always refused for jobs when he first started out; Chuck E. Cheese was his homage to Disney and the advances that have been invented there. In 1981, Bushnell transferred Chuck E. Cheese's day-to-day food service to a newly hired restaurant executive, focusing on Catalyst Technologies.

Bushnell concentrated on PTT companies Sente Technologies and Kadabrascope, 1981 to 1982. Sente was a reentry into the coin-operated game market. Arcade cabinets will feature a cartridge slot so that operators can refresh their games without having to buy whole new cabinets. "Sente Technologies" Feature on "The Games Examiner" (PDF). Retrieved February 11, 2017. Kadabrascope was the first attempt at computer assisted animation. When the restaurants began to lose money, Sente, though profitable, was sold to Bally for $3.9 million, and Kadabrascope was sold to Lucas, which became Pixar.

During this time, Bushnell was using substantial loans on his Pizza Time stock to finance Catalyst. Chuck E. Cheese was having serious financial difficulties by the time 1983. Joe Keenan, the president and a longtime acquaintance, resigned in the fall. Nolan tried to fall back in, blaming the money shortages on overgrowth, excessive tweaking of the formula, and local market saturation. He resigned in February 1984, when the board of directors rejected his amended plans. In the fall of 1984, Chuck E. Cheese's Pizza Time Theaters (now known as after its iconic rat mascot) went bankrupt.

ShowBiz Pizza Place, a local Pizza/Arcade family restaurant, later purchased Chuck E. Cheese's Pizza Time Theatre and assumed its debt. ShowBiz Pizza Time, a newly established business, operated restaurants under both brands before unifying all Chuck E. Cheese stores by 1992. This restaurant's more than 600 locations are still open.

Catalyst Technologies, one of the first company incubators, was founded by Bushnell. Androbot, Etak, Cumma, and Axlon were among the Catalyst Group companies listed in the double digits, including Androbot, Etak, Cumma, and Axlon.

Axlon introduced many consumer and consumer electronics, the majority of which was AG Bear, a bear that mumbled/echoed a child's words back to him/her. Axlon managed the development of two new games for the Atari 2600 in the late 1980s, most likely as part of a marketing effort to revive sales of the device, which is now more than a decade old. Motorodeo, a massive truck-themed game that was one of the last games released on the Atari 2600 platform, was included in this collection. The company was mainly sold to Hasbro.

Etak, which was founded in 1984, was the first company to digitize the maps of the world as part of the first commercial navigation system; the maps later became the backbone for Google Maps, mapquest.com, and other navigation devices; it was sold to Rupert Murdoch in the 1980s. The corporation, which is headquartered in Menlo Park, California, became a wholly owned subsidiary of Tele Atlas in May 2000.

Although many of the ideas eventually resulted in modern-day inventions, the majority of Catalyst's businesses failed due to a lack of under-construction technology that was missing in the 1980s to sustain these high-tech innovations. CinemaVision, for example, was one of Catalyst's companies that attempted to produce high definition television. Cumma also attempted to sell video games using special vending machines that would write the game on demand. ByVideo pioneered an early online shopping experience with kiosks and Laser Discs that enabled customers to virtually buy items that would then be delivered later.

After Aristo International acquired Borta, Inc., where he was chairman, Nolan Bushnell became senior consultant. Mouli Cohen, Aristo's CEO and chairman, was named as Mouli Cohen. Bushnell, a director of Aristo, spearheaded TeamNet, a series of multiplayer-only arcade games targeted at adults, which encouraged teams of up to four players to compete locally or remotely via internet. Aristo was later renamed PlayNet. Borta Inc. Urban Strike and Jungle Strike were among the online Sports Games that were included in the Urban Strike and Jungle Strike series. Aristo's two most popular items were a touchscreen interface bar-top/arcade system that would include internet connectivity, phone calls, and online networked tournaments; and a digital jukebox capable of storing thousands of songs and downloading new releases. By late 1997, the company was facing financial difficulties and planned to withdraw the units it had won in the field and relaunch the line with improvements to the credit card swipe device and internet connectivity. With its prototype machines still in production in 1997, the company died a few months before the dot-com bubble burst, shortly before the dot-com bubble burst.

uWink, a company that grew out of an early project called In10City (pronounced "Intensity) which was a symbol of an entertainment complex and dining experience before BrainRush, Bushnell's most recent venture was uWink, a company that developed out of an early In10City (pronounced 'Intensity) which was a concept of an entertainment complex and dining experience. Bushnell and his business advisor Loni Reeder, who also created the company's original logo, initiated the uWink. The company has had several failed iterations, including a touch-screen kiosk layout, a corporation to administer cash and award awards as part of their uWin scheme, and also an online Entertainment Systems network. Following over seven years and over $24 million in investor funds, the touchscreen kiosks/bartop model was discontinued due to allegations of unpaid prizes and a lack of having service contracts with locations to keep the kiosk/bartop units in working condition. The new iteration (announced in 2005) is a new interactive entertainment venue whose vision is based on Chuck E. Cheese's venture and former venture Bots Inc., which pioneered similar touch-screen terminals in lieu of autonomous pizza delivery robots for Little Caesar's Pizza. Using screens at each table, guests could now order their food and drinks, and watch movie trailers and short videos. The multiplayer network video games that encouraged table to table or even with table group participation never existed. Often, visitors were seen re-booted in order to play much simpler casual video games. The restaurant's location could have been another factor that might have contributed to the restaurant's demise. The Woodland Hills location was on the second floor of a suburban shopping mall, with minimal exposure on a higher level of a shopping center complex. On October 16, 2006, the first Bistro in Woodland Hills, California, was opened. In 2008, the company opened a second location in Hollywood, and one in Mountain View, California. Both the restaurants have since closed.

Atari declared Nolan Bushnell and Tim Virden to serve on the company's board of directors on April 19, 2010.

Bushnell is also one of the creators of Modal VR, a company that manufactures a portable large-scale VR system for businesses that trains educators, to prepare e.g. Security forces are deployed in the United States.

Nolan is on the advisory board of Anti-AgingGames.com and was a co-founder of the organization, which provides online memory, coding, and focus games for healthy people over the age of 35.

BrainRush is a company that uses video game technology in educational applications, where he is both founder, CEO, and chairman. In 2012, the company was funded with venture capital. It is based on the belief that many curriculum lessons can be turned into mini-games. Any body of knowledge, from English language arts to foreign language, multiplication table, or chemistry tables, can be used by developers to gamify body parts of the human body and gamify the experience. The brainRush invention is referred to as "Adaptive Practice" in the company's name. They also developed an open-authoring system that allows users to quickly create games in various target areas.

BrainRush conducted a test in Spanish language pronunciation learning with over 2200 teachers and 80,000 students around the country in 2010 and 2012, resulting in an increase in learning speed of between 8–10 times faster than traditional learning. In the fall of 2013, BrainRush brought out a complete website.

Nolan was elected CEO and Chairman of publicly traded company Global Game Technologies Corp on March 6, 2019.

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