Both were assigned to work directly under Alcorn on the Project.īorrowing a page from Odyssey, the Cosmos used overlays to improve the look of its games. Harry Jenkins, who had just graduated from Stanford University, and Roger Hector, a project designer who had done some impressive work in the coin-op division. Both systems played games stored on cartridges, but Cosmos's tiny cartridges had no electronics, simply a four-by-five inch mylar transparency that cost so little to manufacture that the entire cartridges could retail for $10.Īlcorn's team included two new engineers. Unlike the VCS, Cosmos did not plug into a television set. Toward the end of 1978, Alcorn assembled a team of engineers and began designing a game console called Cosmos. Alcorn wanted to begin work on the next generation of home video-game hardware, but Kassar didn't even want to consider an alternative to the Atari VCS. Instead of developing new technologies, Kassar preferred to push existing ideas to their fullest. The old leadership took risks and pioneered new technologies.
When Ray Kassar replaced Bushnell as president, Atari became a marketing company. Unfazed by the complaints, Alcorn resolved the problem by having Jobs work only at night. Jobs adhered to a fruitarian diet, and believed (incorrectly) that it prevented body odor, so he did not shower regularly or use deodorant. To make matters worse, he had significant body odor. And so I hired him!" Ītari co-founder Nolan Bushnell noted that Jobs was "brilliant, curious, and aggressive," but soon it was apparent that Jobs could also be very difficult to work with, openly mocking other employees and making several enemies in the process. He was eighteen years old so he had to be cheap. But then he started in with this enthusiasm for technology, and he had a spark. As Alcorn described it, "He just walked in the door and here was an eighteen-year-old kind-of a hippy kid, and he wanted a job, and I said ‘Oh, where did you go to school?’ and he says ‘Reed,’ ‘Reed, is that an engineering school?’ ‘No, it’s a literary school,’ and he'd dropped out. Despite Jobs’ startling appearance, Alcorn hired him. Should we call the cops or let him in?" Alcorn said to send him in.
He says he’s not going to leave until we hire him. Jobs had seen a help-wanted ad in the San Jose Mercury newspaper for Atari that said "Have fun, make money." He showed up in the lobby of the video game manufacturer wearing sandals and disheveled hair, and told the personnel director that he wouldn't leave until he was given a job.Īl Alcorn, then chief engineer at Atari, was called and told, "We’ve got a hippie kid in the lobby. In addition to direct involvement with all the breakout Atari products, such as the Atari 2600, Alcorn was involved at some of the historic meetings of Steve Wozniak and Steve Jobs (at that time an Atari employee) presenting their Apple I prototype.Īlcorn was the person who hired Steve Jobs when he applied for a job at Atari in 1974. Cheese's) companies.Īlcorn was the designer of the video arcade game Pong, creating it under the direction of Nolan Bushnell and Dabney. He worked for the pioneering video company Ampex, where he met Ted Dabney and several other people that would end up being constants through the Atari, Inc., Apple, Cyan Engineering and Pizza Time Theater (now known as Chuck E.
Pong consoles and clones were common in mid-1970s.Īlcorn grew up in San Francisco, California, and attended the University of California, Berkeley, graduating with a Bachelor of Science degree in Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences in 1971.
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