New Info on Galaxy Game

I’ve been too busy to post much lately, but I did want to post a quick note about some new information that has recently emerged about Galaxy Game (the two-off game created at Stanford in 1971). 

As I mentioned in an earlier post, a number of people had claimed that Galaxy Game, and not Computer Space, was the world’s first coin-operated video game. This seems to be based on the claim in Tristan Donovan’s book Replay that the game was put on location in September 1971, a month before Computer Space debuted at the 1971 MOA show and about two months before it was “released.” As I also mentioned earlier, I don’t find this line of argument entirely convincing, given that Computer Space was location tested before it made its debut. Goldberg and Vendel claim that it was first tested in August, a month before Galaxy game – though I think this is based on the recollections of Ted Dabney and/or Nolan Bushnell. 

Well, some new information has surfaced that sheds further light on the issue. Donovan’s date was (I believe) based on an interview with Bill Pitts, the game’s programmer and co-creator. While a number of people have interviewed Pitts, including me several years ago, it seems that no one had interviewed Hugh Tuck.

Recently, Alex Smith of the They Create Worlds blog/podcast interviewed Tuck. As luck would have it, Tuck still had the business plan for Mini-Computer Applications, the partnership he and Pitts formed when they were peddling Galaxy Game to investors. There weren’t any major revelations in the document, but it did give some more solid evidence for the game’s dates. According to the document (which was written around February 1972), Pitts designed and built the game interface from July to November 1971. It then notes “In late November, the first game was installed in the Chess Room of the Tresidder Memorial Union at Stanford University. Simultaneously, an ad was run in the Stanford Daily Newspaper stating the name of the game and location.”
So according to contemporary evidence, the game was not put on location until late November 1971, after Computer Space had debuted at the MOA and well after it was first put on location for testing. And it seems that it was very late in November at that. The business plan mentions that when the game was put on location, they put an ad in the Stanford paper. The paper (the Stanford Daily) has an online archive dating back to 1892. I did a search for Galaxy Game and the first ad I found was in the November 29, 1971 issue, which actually contained two:

The November 23 issue also has this personal ad, which was repeated in subsequent issues.  "Atlas" was probably Hugh Tuck, whose family owned a company called Atlas Heating and Ventilating.

Of course, one could still argue that Galaxy Game was "released" before Computer Space,. Computer Space is believe to have started shipping to distributors in November, 1971 - though the date is unclear and it may not have been until December. And it likely would have taken ome time for the game to make its way to distributors to operators to locations. 
As I mentioned in my earlier post, however, I think this argument is a bit dubious because Galaxy Game, which wasn't a commercial product and was not sent to distributors at all, didn't really have a "release" date. 

The Ultimate (so Far) History of Nutting Associates - Part 3

Part of the reason Bill Nutting had turned down Bushnell’s offer of a 10% royalty to license Pong was that he was sure he could produce a similar game without Nolan’s help. Bushnell’s visit, in fact, may have given him a leg up on the competition. Not surprisingly then, Nutting’s Computer Space Ball was one of the first Pong imitators on the market, perhaps even the first. Though some evidence suggests that the game was in production prior to March, when Allied Leisure released Paddle Battle, the evidence is unclear[1]. If Nutting did get its game to market first, it didn’t do them much good. Aside from its possible status as the first Pong clone and its supremely uninspired name, there is little to distinguish Computer Space Ball from the horde of Pong imitators that appeared in 1973. 
Nutting’s other ball-and-paddle games were a bit more interesting. Wimbledon was a four-player tennis game that used distinctive slider controls in place of the standard rotary controls or joysticks. Paddle Derby featured advancing color bars in place of a score. What made the games interesting, however, was not the controls but the graphics. They were among the earliest games to use computer-generated color rather than the cellophane overlays found in other games. Wimbledon was designed by Miel Domis. Domis was serving in the navy in the Dutch Navy in 1971 when he got an offer to come to the United States and work on the Cartrivision – one of the first American-made consumer VCRs and the first to offer prerecorded movies for rental (Electronics Vol 47, 1974; Domis 2016). After the Cartrivision project failed, Domis went to work for Nutting in 1973 and was tasked with designing a color version of Pong. Wimbledon debuted at the 1973 MOA show in November and its release was announced in the December issues of Vending Times and Cash Box. Though the game was billed as the first arcade video game to use real color, Atari’s Color Gotcha probably preceded it by about a month. Wimbledon, however, was in all likelihood the second true-color video game and it is possible that it beat Color Gotcha to market[2].

Note that the headline inadvertently refers to Nutting Associates as Nutting Industries, which was a different company

Wimbledon at the 1973 MOA show

Nutting also produced a handful of other video games, including a two-player version of Computer Space in July 1973. Missile Radar was potentially significant in that, according to Atari’s Steve Bristow, it later served as an inspiration for Atari’s Missile Command – though the claim is unsubstantiated. Nutting also continued to produce non-video games such as 1972's Psychic, in which the player used “ESP” to guess which of four symbols the computer would randomly pick. The major news story of 1973 was the ongoing Watergate investigation and Nutting attempted to cash in with Watergate Caper. Introduced at the 1973 MOA show, the game invited players to “discover the secret combination and break into the Watergate yourself.” Though it is often listed as a video game, its flyer makes no mention of a TV monitor and it may have been an electro-mechanical game along the lines of Milwaukee Coin Industries The Safe. Video game or not, it stands as a rare example of an arcade game based on a political scandal[3]. 

Though Nutting had introduced some interesting innovations in 1973 and 1974, they did not translate into profits, in part because the they were not the right innovations. Players weren’t exactly clamoring to have their rotary controllers replaced with sliders or their numeric score with colored bars (significantly, none of Nutting’s rivals followed its lead). And color, while a significant development, was of little use in a ball-and-paddle game. As a result, by the end of 1974, Nutting had gone bankrupt. But it was not finished. In April 1975, the court approved its plan to repay its creditors and in October, just in time for the MOA show, Nutting was once again solvent (Marketplace 7/30/75). To launch its reentry into the video game arena, Nutting planned to introduce a slate of new games, including Computer Space II, Computer Quiz II, Table Tennis II, and a top secret game referred to only as “Project X”. It is not known if any of them was ever released, but the fact that all were sequels is telling.

In 1977, Bill Nutting sold Nutting Associates to Reno slot machine manufacturer William “Si” Redd (a colorful character, known as the father of video poker, whose story will have to wait for another time), who felt that Nutting might serve as a good cover for the gray-area gaming machines he was sending to California, Hawaii, and Guam (Harpster 2010). Engineer Dale Frey suggests that Redd may also have wanted to gain control of a lawsuit Bill Nutting planned to launch against Nolan Bushnell over Pong (Harpster 2010). In July 1977, Nutting Associates of California was merged into Nutting Associates of Nevada. The final game to bear the Nutting Associates name was Ricochet, which debuted at the 1977 AMOA show in October and appears to have been a clone of Exidy’s TV Pinball from 1974. That Nutting chose to release a three-year-old ball-and-paddle game when the industry had long since moved past them is perhaps the best summary of its post-Bushnell history. In any event, it was a sad end for a company that had released the world’s first commercial arcade video game just six years earlier.  

Bill Nutting

In fall 1979, Si Redd merged Nutting Associates with his own A-1 Supply to form a new company called Sircoma and hired Bill Nutting as production manager. By the end of the year, Nutting had left Sircoma and was serving as a pilot for a small Nevada airline. One night, while returning to Reno, the engine on his Cessna quit, forcing Bill to make a belly landing in a city dump. Despite facial lacerations and two broken ankles, he walked two miles to a farm house to find help. Three months later, he was back flying charter, but the accident had led him and his wife Claire to think about their purpose in life. The pair flew to Redlands, California and joined Mission Aviation Fellowship, an air-taxi service for Christian missionaries formed in the late 1940s, where they served as administrators in Nairobi from 1981 to 1985 before returning to the states. Bill Nutting died on July 28, 2008 in Prescott, Arizona, his role in video game history largely forgotten. (Petersen 1992)

[1] In an interview in the August 1976 issue of Play Meter, Vic Leslie, chair of England’s Cherry Group, claimed that Nutting VP Rui Lopes approached him at the 1973 ATE show (held January 31-February 2), asking if he would be interested in marketing Computer Space Ball in England. – though It is uncertain if the game was anything more than a name at that point. The earliest solidly dated reference I have found to the game is a mention in the June 16, 1973 issue of Cash Box, which noted that the game was “still going great guns,” suggesting that it had been introduced sometime earlier.

[2] Another true color video game that some sources claim was produced in 1973 was Kasco’s Playtron – a game in which a whale ate small fish. Only two prototype units were produced, however, and it is unclear exactly when they were made. Nutting's Paddle Derby, Table Tennis, and Table Tennis II also appear to have used true color. KLOV lists Paddle Derby as a 1972 release, but gives no source for the date, which is almost certainly inaccurate given that Pong was released in November 1972. The release of Table Tennis was announced in the June 1, 1974 issue of Cash Box. The Model numbers of Table Tennis II (751) and Paddle Derby (752) imply that they were released after Wimbledon (model 730). An Atari financial document lists Color Gotcha as an October 1973 release, but it is possible that they were just assuming it came out at the same time as Gotcha – though all other release dates in the document seem to be accurate.

[3] No copy of Watergate Caper or Missile Radar has ever turned up and it is unclear if the games were ever produced. Game flyers include only crude drawings along with a bare-bones description. Cash Box confirms that Watergate Caper was on display at the 1973 MOA show, but it is not known if it was ever released.

The Ultimate (so Far) History of Nutting Associates - Part 2

The last time, I discussed the early years of Nutting Associates before they released Computer Space. Today's post will cover Computer Space in terms of Nutting's relation to it. Be sure to read the notes, as they provide a good deal of background info and detail on the evidence supporting various claims. They do not show up as hyperlinks, so you will need to scroll to the bottom to read them.Thanks to Alex Smith of the They Create Worlds podcast/blog for the excellent photos.

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The above photo of Bill Nutting with a Computer Space unit appeared in the June 1978 issue of Loose Change - though I don't know when it was taken.

Though Nutting’s follow-ups to Computer Quiz had met with little success, help soon arrived in the form an Ampex engineer named Nolan Bushnell, who showed up on Nutting’s doorstep in early 1970. Bushnell and a colleague named Ted Dabney had designed a coin-op game of their own based on Steve Russell’s mainframe classic Spacewar, and were unsuccessfully trying to find a buyer for it. And this game was unlike anything ever see in the coin-op industry. Rather than using filmstrips, its images were computer-generated and displayed on a video monitor – in other words, it was a video game. I will not go into the story of that game’s development, which started long before Bushnell came to Nutting Associates and which merits several posts of its own. Instead, I will pick up the story in early 1971[1], when Bushnell paid a visit to his dentist. 

When Bushnell told his dentist about his new game, the dentist told him about another patient named Dave Ralstin, who had recently started working for a local coin-op company named Dave Nutting Associates. A few days later, Bushnell called Ralstin, who arranged a meeting with Bill Nutting. Nutting, who desperately needed a follow-up to Computer Quiz, expressed interest in Nolan’s idea but the meeting ended without a deal. Bill Nutting, however, had more problems than just finding another hit game. The departure of Ball and White had left him without a chief engineer and he needed a replacement quickly. He called Bushnell back and asked if he would be willing to join Nutting as head engineer and to oversee production. Nolan was interested, but he wanted to keep control of his new game. Over a series of meetings, the two hammered out a deal whereby Bushnell would work at Nutting during the day while working on his version of Spacewar after hours, for no pay. When the game was finished, Nutting would pay for the manufacturing and marketing and Bushnell would receive a 5% royalty on each unit sold[2] (Goldberg and Vendel 2012). Bushnell was happy because he would keep control of the game's underlying technology and Nutting was glad to get someone to work on a game free of charge as well as the chief engineer he desperately needed. Bushnell quit his job at Ampex and went to work for Nutting Associates, where he was eventually joined by Ted Dabney (once again, I will skip the details of Bushnell and Dabney’s subsequent work on the game in order to concentrate on Nutting Associates). 

By late summer, Bushnell and Dabney had completed a prototype version of their game. Now they just needed to find a place to test it. Dave Ralstin operated a coin-op route and Bill Nutting suggested they try the game out in The Dutch Goose, a bar on Ralstin's route located near the Stanford campus. At this point, the game still did not have a name. At one point, it was called Cosmic Combat but that did not last (Bushnell 1976b[3]). Someone – perhaps Nutting or Ralstin[4] - suggested they call it Computer Space. In August, Bushnell and Dabney loaded the test unit into the back of Ted's pickup and headed for The Dutch Goose, where the game proved quite popular (Goldberg and Vendel 2012[5]). When they tried the game at other locations on the route, however, such as a pizza parlor, it did not fare nearly as well. This was not surprising since the average pizza parlor patron was far less technical than the engineering geeks who frequented The Dutch Goose. Another problem may have been the complicated controls, which consisted of four buttons. An attempt at a crude aluminum joystick that could be twisted to control the ship was abandoned after it was tested at a Round Table pizza parlor in Alameda and disintegrated within a few hours (Goldberg and Vendel 2012; Edwards 2011)[6]. Control issues aside, testing went well enough for Nutting to market the game. 

Computer Space on display at the October 1971 MOA show. From Cash Box. I know that you can barely see the corners of the actual game, but could this be the earliest published photo of an arcade video game? I can't really say. It's possible that a photo of Galaxy Game could have appeared in the Stanford student paper or that a photo of Computer Space on test at the Dutch Goose could have appeared in the San Jose Mercury News, but this is the earliest one I've found yet. I don't know who the person is with his back to the camera standing in front of the game, but it could be Nolan.

Computer Space reached a national audience at the Music Operators of America expo, held at the Conrad Hilton Hotel in Chicago on October 15-17, 1971. Nutting had built four units for the show, in four different colors (yellow, red, white, and blue) but when Bushnell and Dabney unpacked them, they found that the monitors had fallen out. They were able to get three working but the fourth was still DOA. Thinking fast, they turned it around backward, telling visitors they did so to "display" its internal workings. During the show, an overenthusiastic Bushnell talked about his game to anyone who cared to listen, and a few who did not.

[Ed Adlum] That show happened a long time ago, but I still remember Nolan and his weird machine to this day. You couldn’t miss the big, yellow machine with the TV tube. And you couldn’t miss Nolan…he was the most excited person I’ve ever seen over the age of six talking about his game. He was so hot about it, I remember backing up, trying to get on my way to see the other booths, and he was still talking! (Webb 1997)

Many of those who did listen told Bushnell he was crazy to try to market such a thing – especially in California, when everyone knew that the center of the coin-op universe was in Chicago. One visitor was sure that customers would steal the televisions out of the games. Bushnell (1976a) later claimed that Nutting took no orders at the show, though other accounts claim they took a handful (Goldberg and Vendel 2012). Orders or not, Bill Nutting was reportedly so pleased that he took Nolan for a spin in the Waco SRE Biplane he had spent the previous two-and-a-half years restoring (Goldberg and Vendel 2012; Cox 1972). Nutting showed the game again at the International Association of Amusement Parks and Attractions (IAAPA) show on November 9-12 and began selling it in November of December[7], likely producing around 1,500 units - though this figure is a bit uncertain[8].

Bill Nutting with his Waco SRE biplane around the time Computer Space was released - from the May 1972 issue of Sport Aviation . Below is a color shot of the plane from the magazine's cover.

The design of Computer Space stands out even today. The game was housed in a sleek, rounded, fiberglass cabinet, allegedly built by a swimming pool and hot tub manufacturer named John Hebbler (Edwards 2011). Though Hebbler may have built it, the cabinet was designed by Nolan Bushnell[9], who built the prototype out of clay on his kitchen table (Goldberg and Vendel 2012). With its ultramodern style, the cabinet resembled something from the set of 2001: A Space Odyssey. It was available in multiple colors – metallic flake red, green, or blue. The hardware consisted of a Xentek power supply, a GE television set, and a series of circuit boards, dubbed the “brain box” in company flyers. 

If the game’s cabinet is still impressive 40 years later, the gameplay is much less so. Unlike Spacewar, Bushnell’s game was strictly a one-player affair. Instead of a human opponent, the player squared off against a pair of computer-controlled UFOs that flitted randomly about the screen. The controls consisted of four buttons – rotate left and right, thrust, and fire missile. There was no hyperspace. The game was timed, with bonus time for a good performance, and the player's shots could be guided after they were fired. The instructions, printed beneath the monitor, were simple

1. Insert quarter and press start; your rocket ship will appear
2. There is no gravity in space; rocket speed can only be changed by engine, thrust
3. Evade the saucers’ missiles and use yours to score hits
4. Outscore the saucers for extended play in hyperspace

Modern gamers would probably be bored by Computer Space. The graphics were crude, even by the standards of games released just a few years later, with the ships represented by dotted outlines. The background was static, the sound effects primitive, and the “steerable” shots made it difficult to score a hit. Of course, it is unfair to judge the game against what came after. For its time, it was a remarkable achievement unlike anything the coin-op industry, let alone the general public, had ever seen. The game left onlookers, most of whom had never seen anything on a television screen other than a television broadcast, gaping in amazement.

[Ted Dabney] They were blown away by it. That is something that really boggled their brains. All of a sudden, there’s a TV picture that they have control of. It was totally new to them. (Edwards 2011)

Though building the machine had its difficulties, marketing it proved even more challenging. Nutting initially had a hard time getting anyone to purchase the units. Dave Ralstin gave away the first five as a promotional gimmick – one to each of the five largest distributors. Eventually, however, the game began to sell. If production numbers on the game are somewhat uncertain, sales numbers are even more so. According to Goldberg and Vendel, Ralstin was able to sell around 1,000 units but his workmanlike efforts only got him fired when Bill Nutting decided he did not need to pay a commission to someone for doing what he could do himself[10]. Nutting was able to sell about 500 additional units, reporting that he had to sell some of them “by force” (Bloom 1982b, Goldberg and Vendel 2012). Other sources give sales figures ranging from 500 to 2,200[11]. Similarly, the amount of money Bushnell and Dabney made on the game has been variously reported as ranging from $500 to $150,000[12].

 Computer Space on the production line at Nutting - from Cash Box.

Regardless of which sales figures they use; most accounts portray the game as a monumental flop. Compared with the sales figures of video games of the late 1970s and 1980s this is arguably true, but by the standards of the time, the claim seems a bit of an overstatement. A search of the Internet Pinball Database for pinball machines released between 1969 and 1971 shows that of the circa 90 games for which they have production figures, about half sold less than 1,500 units, with just three topping 5,000. An article in the February 12, 1972 issue of Cash Box notes that Nutting was reporting “geared up production to fill sizeable back orders for their new Computer Space unit and quoted Dave Ralstin as saying that “acceptance of the unit by the industry has been tremendous” and that income reports for the game “may well be the all-time high industry producer.” The May 1972 issue of Vending Times repeated the Ralstin quote and mentioned that Nutting had started a second shift to keep up with demand.

The July 22, 1972 issue of Cash Box noted that the game was a “top item” at Portale Automatic Sales. Though Ralstin’s quotes were likely marketing puffery, the claims that Nutting had started a second shift and that the game was selling well for Portale indicate that they were not entirely inaccurate. One 1973 article called Computer Space “a moderately successful game” and noted that “it was particularly popular around college campuses” (Kocher 1973). Benj Edwards (2011) quotes Bushnell as saying, “I thought it was a great success, but it could have been better.” Brad Fregger is best known for his work as a video game producer at Activision in the 1990s. Earlier in his career, however, Fregger worked as a service technician for Nutting Associates. Fregger recalls that Computer Space was actually quite popular but that its success was limited by lack of management support.

[Brad Fregger] I found myself between jobs and a friend of mine, Rod Geiman, president of a small company called Nutting & [sic] Associates asked me if I would help him out…Rod had a number of…products out in bars, arcades, laundromats, even in the San Jose Airport…with no one to service them. Rod wanted me to help him out until he could find somebody to take the job. I said sure. Computer Space was a hit; there were times when I got complaints the machine wouldn’t work, only to discover the coin box was jammed full and the coins were backed up the shoot [sic]…Nutting…closed down a couple of years later. The owner (not Rod) was more interested in evangelism. He built his own plane in his warehouse and flew off to save souls in Africa. It was his focus on evangelism that limited the success of Computer Space, not any lack of acceptance on the part of the playing public. (2012)

Bill Nutting, on the other hand, claimed that the game received a mixed response and that he had to force some distributors to take it, while Steven Kent reports that the game failed to sell its production run (Bloom 1982a; Kent 2001). Flop or not, the game had its fans. In an interview in the August 1976 issue of Play Meter, Vic Leslie, chair of England’s Cherry Group, which distributed and operated Atari games in the UK, discussed having seen the game at the MOA show[13].

[Vic Leslie] I was pretty bowled over by a machine there called Nutting Computer Space. I thought it was the most fabulous game I had ever played; I couldn't tear myself away from it. I felt at the time it was going to revolutionize the industry. However, I didn't feel it prudent at that time to purchase because of the technology involved in the game: it was way beyond anything we could handle in England. Even people here in America who were better judges than I were pessimistic about it.

Bob Portale getting his "super spaceman" award from Bill Nutting - from Cash Box.

One person who saw the game at an LA area airport was so impressed with its design (he searched in vain for the phone wires he was sure were transmitting a film image) that he reportedly offered Bushnell a $60,000-a-year job. Luckily, Ted Dabney was able to talk Bushnell out of accepting the offer or Atari might have died before it even got started (Dabney 2012b). Bob Portale of Portale Automatic Sales, a well-known Los Angeles area distributor, became the game’s champion and largest distributor, earning him a “super spaceman” award from Nutting (Cash Box 11/4/72). The game was also a hit at Sunnyvale's Andy Capp's Tavern and even made its way into popular media. In 1973, it appeared in the cult sci-fi classic Soylent Green, a movie about twenty-first century America’s grisly solution to the twin problems of overcrowding and hunger. In an early scene, a character named Shirl (Leigh Taylor Young) is seen playing a gleaming white version of the game, an expensive present from the wealthy suitor for whom she “works” (and who is soon to be rendered into kibble). On leaving, she proudly proclaims, “I demolished five saucers with one rocket!” to which a companion (Chuck Connors) replies “Not bad for an amateur.” Another piece of celebrity trivia involves the game’s iconic flyer, which featured an attractive blonde in a see-through white nightgown with her arm draped over a yellow Computer Space machine. A long-standing rumor claims that the woman is none other than actress Yvette Mimieux who had appeared in a number of films in the 1960s, including George Pal’s The Time Machine. The claim, however, is in all likelihood false[14]. Computer Space also had the honor of being installed in Orlando’s Contemporary Resort Hotel for the grand opening of the new Walt Disney World, allowing Nolan, at least vicariously, to finally make it to Disney (where he’d always wanted to work). Another sign that the game may have been more than a flop is that is spawned an imitator. In September 1972, a company called For-Play Manufacturing released a clone of the game called Star Trek- though it apparently did not last long.

Even if Computer Space was not the total flop it has often been portrayed to be, it does seem to have been something of a disappointment. The game failed to match the success of Computer Quiz and certainly did not revolutionize the industry, as Bushnell hoped, if not expected, it would. There are a number of possible reasons for this. For one thing, the game may have been too complicated. The average arcade or bar customer was a far cry from the bleary-eyed hackers of MIT or Nolan Bushnell’s engineering buddies. Bar patrons were used to simple, easy-to-understand action games like pinball and pool. Some reported that the game was also slow and was not a lot of fun for the casual player. Another reason may have been that while Spacewar had been a two-player game, Computer Space was only a one-player game, and thus lacked the competitive appeal of the MIT original. 
Nolan Bushnell's career at Nutting did not last long after Computer Space. In spring 1972, he met with Bill Nutting to discuss creating a simpler version of the game that might have broader appeal. During the meeting, Nolan dropped a bombshell, telling Nutting he wanted one-third ownership in the company plus a greater role in management (Bushnell 2003). Nutting countered with an offer of 5%, but Bushnell would have to stay on as engineer (Bushnell 1982b, Bloom 1982a, Goldberg and Vendel 2012). After discussing the matter with Ted Dabney, the two realized they had no future at Nutting and Bushnell began talking to other coin-op companies. In May 1972, Bushnell and Dabney quit Nutting to strike out on their own and the following month, they formed a new company called Atari – and the rest, as they say, is history. Though Bill Nutting’s decision to let Bushnell go may seem foolish in hindsight, he claimed to have had no regrets 

[Bill Nutting] Well, Nolan walked away with $20 million and I didn’t. I just wouldn’t do the kinds of things that had to be done to get successful. In my mind, I’ll always believe I did the smart thing by getting out. (Bloom 1982a)

Bushnell did have more contact with Nutting, working on a two-player version of Computer Space and offering Bill Nutting a licensing deal on Pong that would have paid him a 10% royalty – an offer that Nutting declined. At this point, Nutting Associates and Bill Nutting fade from the pages of most video game histories, which generally treat them as something of a footnote in video game history: the company that passed up a golden opportunity to get in on the ground floor of a revolution, thanks largely to Bill Nutting's mismanagement and myopia. Not only did Nutting let Nolan Bushnell, the father of the arcade video game industry, slip through its fingers, but it rejected his offer to license Pong, the game that launched the industry. Had it taken advantage of either, might Nutting Associates, rather than Atari, have become the fastest growing company in American history and a touchstone of 1980s pop culture?

Almost surely not. Though Bill Nutting may not have deserved his reputation as a clueless bungler, he was no Nolan Bushnell and lacked the drive and single-minded vision to launch a revolution. Contrary to popular belief, however, Nutting did not abandon video games after Bushnell’s departure. Between 1973 and 1977, the company released almost a dozen video and arcade games – though even students of video game history would be hard pressed to name one. The next time, we’ll take a look at Nutting’s post-Computer Space history.

Sidebar – Which Was First?

I have not discussed Galaxy Game in this post, though I have covered it at some length in an earlier post. Galaxy Game is a one-off (actually a two-off) game designed by Bill Pitts and Hugh Tuck and placed at the Stanford student union. Some maintain that it, not Computer Space deserves the title of “world’s first coin-operated video game” I personally find this claim unconvincing. Though it may be true that Galaxy Game was placed on location in September 1971 – at least two months before the first units of Computer Space went on sale, it is a bit inaccurate to claim that Galaxy Game was thus the first coin-op video game. According to Goldberg and Vendel, Computer Space was initially tested at The Dutch Goose in August, a month before Galaxy Game was installed at Stanford[15]. If these dates are accurate, then it seems that Computer Space was the first coin-op video game that the public could actually drop their coins into. Claiming that the August date does not count because it was not a release date is unfair. Galaxy Game was not a commercial product and thus was never really “released” at all, nor was it ever sold - its testing date essentially was its release date. For some, the important date in establishing priority is not the release date or the testing date but the date work actually started and here the data is less clear. Bushnell and Dabney probably started working on Computer Space in the summer of 1970 and according to Bushnell (1976), the first time “they had an apparatus completed in which you could play any version of Computer Space” was “probably in April or May of 1971.” It is unclear exactly when Pitts and Tuck started working on Galaxy Game, but they did not form Computer Recreations until June 1971, well after the formation of Syzygy. If the August testing date is correct, it seems that the title of world’s first coin-op video game should be returned to its original holder – Computer Space.


NOTES

[1] The exact date of Bushnell’s dentist visit is a bit unclear. Goldberg and Vendel place it in February 1970, but this is clearly too early as Bushnell was still negotiating with Data General to purchase several Nova mini-computers to create a mini-computer-based, multi-display version of the game in January and February 1971. The date will likely be corrected in subsequent editions. February 1971 is a more likely date, though even this may be a bit too early. 

[2] Bushnell (2003) claimed that he also got twice the salary he had at Ampex ($1600 a month vs $825) and a car.

[3] During the deposition a document was entered into evidence titled “Position and Line Counter Cosmic Combat” by S.F. Dabney, dated January 26, 1971. Bushnell later said that Computer Space had been called Cosmic Combat at one point. Goldberg and Vendel report that it was referred to merely as “The Rocketship Game” early on.

[4] Edwards (2011) says it was Ralstin who came up with the name. Goldberg and Vendel (2012) say it was Nutting. 

[5] Donovan (2010) places the location test in November, but this is clearly too late as the game was shown at the MOA show in October. He may have been confusing the test date with the release date. 

[6] Bushnell (1976a) speculated that the joystick version was made “I guess in January” of 1972.

[7] The November 1971 release date has been reported in most accounts of the game’s 
origins, but almost none of them give a source for the date. One possible source is Cash Box magazine. In the November 27, 1971 issue, Nutting ran an ad for Computer Space, claiming that it was “available now at your distributor.” The December 4 issue included an article announcing the game’s introduction, which noted that it was “being readied for U.S. distribution.” Nolan Bushnell (1974) said he thought the first unit was sold in late December 1971 or early January 1972 but was not certain. Steven Kent (2001) reports that Keith Feinstein - curator of the Videotopia exhibit - found shipping and sales records that proved the game was in production in 1971.

[8] The majority of sources cite the 1,500 figure, including Bisgeier et al. (1973), Video Games (12/82), Cohen (1984), Sheff (1993), Kent (2001), Burnham (2001), and Goldberg and Vendel (2012). Webb (1997) says that “maybe 1,500” were built. Trachtman (1981) and Kubey (1982) give a figure of 2,000. Nolan Bushnell later said that he thought they may have made as many as 2,200 (Drury 2011b).

[9] Ted Dabney designed the game’s original cabinet, which was not nearly as futuristic. 

[10] Cash Box and Vending Times both report that Ralstin was still with Nutting in May 1972, so it he was fired it likely took place after that date. 

[11] Bloom (1982) quotes Nutting as saying, “We built 1,500 and had to sell some of them by force” – though this does not mean that they sold all 1,500. Bushnell (1982b) said that he thought they sold “about 2,000” and in other accounts he has placed the figure at 2,200. In his 1976 deposition, however, he said he thought they sold 1300-1500 (Bushnell 1976a). Donovan (2010) reported that they sold “more than 1,500.” A number of sources (Bloom 1982a and 1982b, Slater 1987) report that Bushnell earned only $500 in royalties, which at 5% would translate to less than ten units sold – which is clearly too low. Edwards (2011) claims that sales estimates for the game range from 500 to 1,000 units, though it is unclear where these estimates came from.

[12] See previous note for the $500 figure, which probably results from confusion with the initial seed money used to establish Syzygy. The $150,000 figure is from Benj Edwards, but is probably inaccurate. Edwards based his figures on sales of 1,000 units - the most he thinks were sold - reporting that the game grossed about $3,000,000 in unit sales, of which Bushnell and Dabney got 5%. This seems inaccurate for three reasons. First, the 1,000-sold figure is probably too low. Second, the revenue figures are probably too high. Third, Bushnell and Dabney probably would have received 5% of the sales to distributors, not to operators (distributors normally added about 30% to the wholesale price). When the game was introduced at the 1971 MOA show, brochures advertised a price of “less than” $2,000. Bushnell (1976a) said he thought they sold the game for $1295 or $1195 and later dropped the price to $950. If Nutting sold approximately 1,500 copies of the game, at a wholesale price of $1000-1300, and if Bushnell and Dabney got a 5% royalty, their cut would have been $75,000 to $100,000

[13] Leslie claims he saw it at the 1972 show. He may have been referring to the 1971 show, or he may be talking about the two-player version, which was shown at the 1972 show (Drury 2010a).

[14] No source is given for the claim and it is uncertain where it first appeared. One possible source is Bueschel (1995), which notes that the flyer shows Yvette Mimieux “before movie fame.” In fact, Mimieux was near the end of her movie career in 1971. Computerspacefan.com speculates that the woman was “more likely an employee of The Brass Rail” – a Sunnyvale strip club popular with engineers. The source for this claim may have been a talk Nolan Bushnell gave to high school entrepreneurs in Los Angeles on May 17, 2013 as recounted by Walter Isaacson (Isaacson 2014). In Isaacson's account, Atari produced a "sales brochure" for Pong that "featured a beautiful young woman in a slinky sheer nightgown draping her arm over the game machine" whom Bushnell claims they hired "from the topless bar down the street." I have not seen the original interview, but Isaacson clearly seems to be describing the Computer Space flyer. 

[15] Donovan (2010) reports that the first Computer Space unit was “installed” at the Dutch Goose in November, but he may be referring to the first production unit

The Ultimate (so Far) History of Nutting Associates - Part 1

I have been too busy to post for several months. I am still on the book, but it’s going slowly. I hoped to have something out by this summer but I don’t know if I will make that date or not.

Anyhow, I recently came into a little more information on the early years of Nutting Associates, including what may be the first published photograph of an arcade video game, so I thought I’d do a post on the company’s history. Nutting Associates has interested me since I first found out about Computer Quiz and Computer Space. I think that both the company and Bill Nutting have gotten a bit of an unfair shake. Perhaps this article will start to correct that. 

Thanks to Alexander Smith of They Create Worlds for providing the photo of Knowledge Computer and some of the other photos in this article.

Nutting Associates

Bill Nutting in 1944

William Gilbert Nutting was born May 3, 1926[1] and grew up in the affluent suburb of River Forest, Illinois. His father Harold and grandfather Charles were executives at Marshall Field & Co, the well-known Chicago-area department store chain. After taking his first airplane ride at age 10, William developed a lifelong love of flying, and was a member of his high school aviation club[2]. After attending Oak Park and River Forest High School, William enlisted in the Army Air Corps reserves at nearby Fort Sheridan on August 24, 1944, apparently skipping his senior year of high school to do so[3]. After World War II, Nutting spent two years at Colgate University before transferring to Colorado University, where his high school classmate Claire Ulman was a student. Bill and Claire were married in Cook County, Illinois, on December 23, 1948, and in 1950, William graduated with a degree in business administration (Petersen 1992). The newlyweds then moved to San Francisco where Bill took a job at Rheem Manufacturing, a maker of heating and cooling products. Eventually, Bill decided to follow in his father's footsteps and took a job in the gloves department of Raphael Weill & Company – a massive luxury department store known as The White House for its gleaming beaux-arts façade (Goldberg and Vendel 2012). 

Edex's Knowledge Computer, from Cash Box, 1964

Nutting entered the coin-op industry in a roundabout fashion. In the mid-1960s, he invested in Edex Teaching Systems, a Mountain View company that made multimedia training equipment for the US military and other clients. Edex - the name stood for “education excellence” - had been founded by Eugene Kleiner, one of the “traitorous eight” that left Shockley Labs in 1957 to form Fairchild Semiconductor. Much later, his venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins would help establish more than 300 companies, including Amazon, Compaq, Genetech, and Sun Microsystems. One of Edex’s products was The Knowledge Computer, a “teaching machine” designed by Thomas R. Nisbet[4] that presented multiple-choice questions on strips of film. When another investor jokingly suggested putting a coin slot on the machine, Nutting took him at his word and produced a coin-op version that was sold in 1964 by Scientific Amusement Company and/or Edex (Cash Box 8/22/64; Billboard 10/24/64; 10/31/64[5]). 

An illustration from Knowledge Computer's patent application, filed January 7, 1964

In 1965, Kleiner sold Edex to defense contractor Raytheon for $5 million (Kaplan 2008). Around this time, Nutting apparently formed his own company called Nutting Corp. and began selling the game in the San Francisco area via distributor Advanced Automatic Sales (Billboard 10/23/65[6]). Save for a single reference, nothing is known of Nutting Corp. which apparently didn’t last long. At some point, Bill called his brother Dave in Milwaukee with an idea to form a company to manufacture and sell a new coin-op version of The Knowledge Computer[7]. After Bill flew to Milwaukee, the two agreed that Dave - who lived close to Chicago, then the epicenter of the coin-op industry - would build the games while Bill marketed them (Nutting 2001). Bill then visited Chicago, Detroit, and New York to talk to more distributors and learn the ins and outs of the coin-op industry. 

Meanwhile, Dave set to work redesigning the game, with the help of an engineer friend named Harold S. Montgomery, with Harold designing the circuitry and Dave handling the cabinetry, projector, and other parts[8]. They eventually completed a prototype and began testing it in Milwaukee-area bowling alleys. Siblings or not, the Nutting partnership did not last long. According to Dave Nutting, the split came about because Bill's wife Claire threatened to divorce him unless he abandoned the arrangement with his brother and made the games himself. This seems unlikely however. Claire Nutting (interviewed by researcher Alexander Smith in 2017) denies ever threatening divorce and Claire and Bill were deeply religious, making it unlikely she would have done so for such a trivial reason.  In a letter written to his son Craig in 2002, Bill Nutting claimed he made the decision to end the partnership because he didn’t trust Dave’s motives. There was also a rivalry between the two that stretched back to their childhood, in part because Bill had always been his parents’ favorite son. Whatever the reason for the breakup, Bill called Dave and told him to shut down his Milwaukee operation.Already heavily invested in the venture - as, reportedly, was his father - Dave decided to form his own company and produce his own version of the game called IQ Computer (Goldberg and Vendel 2012). In February 1967[9] Bill Nutting formed a company called Nutting Associates in Mountain View and Dave (at an unknown date) formed Nutting Industries in Milwaukee[10].

Without a design staff, Bill was back to square one. He sought help from a local marketing services company, who assigned an industrial designer named Richard Ball to the task. Ball placed Nutting's original prototype version on test at the College of San Mateo. Five days later, he was shocked to find the coin box filled with dimes. With newfound enthusiasm, he set to work redesigning the machine, building a new projector, converting the machine to quarter play, and making other changes, and Nutting released the game, now called Computer Quiz, around November 1967[11] (Ball n.d.; Cash Box). 

Of the changes Ball made, the conversion to quarter play may have been the most significant. At the time, most coin-op games cost a dime. Pinball games often offered three games for a quarter and jukeboxes likewise offered multiple songs for a quarter, but Computer Quiz was one of the first coin-op amusement machines to feature straight quarter play for a single game. Though Sega's Periscope, which was probably released in the United States around March 1968, introduced the concept of quarter play to arcades, Computer Quiz, which was mainly found in bars, was likely the first to do so overall. 

As significant as the addition of quarter play was, a subsequent change may have been even more important. Like most, if not all, coin-op machines of the time, Computer Quiz relied on electro-mechanical technology. According to Ball, the game's copper relays were a maintenance nightmare, so he approached a company called Applied Technology to design a circuit board that used plug-in relays (Ball n.d.). In the summer of 1968, Ball and Applied Technology, along with a Nutting intern, created a new version of the game that replaced the relays with solid-state, semi-conductor-based circuitry (Ball n.d.). Ed Adlum thinks it may have been the first coin-op amusement machine with an all solid-sate design (Kent 2001). 

With Computer Quiz, bar patrons answered questions in one of four categories (Sports and Games, The Many Arts, etc.) After selecting a topic, the game presented four questions, one at a time on a tiny screen, along with five possible answers. Controls consisted of five buttons marked A through E. The goal was to pick the correct answer as quickly as possible. The faster a player answered, the more points they scored - in multiples of 47, for some unfathomable reason. A score of 700 allowed the player to “try for genius” with four additional questions. If they scored enough points in this round, they were rewarded with a glowing “genius” light.” Each “program” (film) contained 2,500 questions and operators could order new films when the old ones wore out - or when customers had memorized all the answers.

If the gameplay was different from other games on the market, so was the technology, even if the fact was less than apparent. At first glance, the games resembled cigarette machines as much as anything else. A closer inspection, however, showed that they were quite innovative for the time. Though the games, despite their name, made no use of a computer, they did feature an all-electronic design. There was no CRT, however. Questions were stored on a filmstrip and projected onto the screen. Rather than using LEDs, which were too expensive for a commercial product at the time, or pinball-style manual scoring reels, the cumulative score was displayed via nixie tubes. Invented at Burroughs in 1957, the nixie tube consisted of a series of glass tubes filled with neon gas containing 10 wire filaments lined up one behind the other, shaped like the numerals 0 through 9.

In addition to being innovative, Computer Quiz also proved quite successful, at least for a coin-op game in the late 1960s. Nutting Associates produced 4,200 units of Computer Quiz and Nutting Industries built 3,600 IQ Computers (Goldberg and Vendel 2012). Computer Quiz was also one of the earliest coin-op games to appeal to locations that would not consider installing a traditional coin-op game. In 1969, for instance, Nutting was invited to show the game at the annual National Putting Course and Driving Range Convention in Miami Beach (Cash Box 3/15/69). That same year, it showed the game at a menswear show and at the National Association of College Student Unions (Cash Box 6/14/69; 6/21/69). 

Colleges, in fact, appear to have been one of the more popular new locations for the game. The students of Trinity University of San Antonio even used one to prepare for an appearance on the General Electric College Bowl program (Cash Box 3/29/69). Ransom White, a Stanford MBA who joined Nutting in the summer of 1967, installed a number of Computer Quiz units at various locations around campus while still a student, where it proved quite popular. Many of these locations, like The Oasis, a popular watering hole near campus, catered primarily to Stanford students and did not any have pinball or electro-mechanical games (White 2014). For thirsty college students and adult bar patrons, a trivia game was ideal. Perhaps more important, the veneer of education appealed to locations that were leery of coin-op games because of their alleged association with organized crime and gambling.

Ransom White

Overall, however, Nutting Associates was only marginally profitable. Ransom White opines that this may have been because it decided to bypass traditional distributors and sell its games directly to “operators,” some of whom were a bit shady. Richard Ball claims that another problem was the company's small, inexperienced engineering staff (Ball n.d.). In any event, Ball, White, and executive Lance Hailstone soon left to form a company of their own called Cointronics. To replace them, in 1969, Nutting hired Rod Geiman as executive vice president and Dave Ralstin as sales manager[12]. In December 1968, Nutting Associates moved from its tiny 4,500-square-foot facility to a new 18,500-square-foot warehouse and began looking to expand into new markets (Weber 1968). 

Above - two photos from Cash Box, 1969

Nutting followed Computer Quiz with a handful of other games like Sports World (July 1969, a sports version of Computer Quiz), Astro Computer (September 1969, a horoscope machine). Neither came close to matching the success of Computer Quiz.

Mondial's Professor Quizmaster, one of Computer Quiz's imitators

Sidebar – Nutting (Almost) Invents the Coin-Op Video Game

According to some sources, Nutting Associates may have considered the idea of a coin-operated video game long before Nolan Bushnell showed up on its doorstep. In 1968, Richard Ball told Bill Nutting that sales projections indicated Computer Quiz would not last much longer. Told to do something about it, Ball claims that he came up with a proposal for a coin-operated video game called Space Command, to be sold to bars[13]. Before the game could be built, however, Bill Nutting reportedly fired Ball after Ball blasted him for buying an airplane with company funds (Goldberg and Vendel 2012). Ball may not have been too upset about leaving as his time with Nutting had convinced him that the entire coin-op industry was controlled by organized crime (Ball n.d.) Ball and Ransom White, along with sales rep Lance Hailstone, formed a company called Cointronics and exhibited the games Zap Ball and Ball/Walk at the 1968 IAAPA expo (Schlachter 1968). In Zap Ball, two players used compressed air to move a glowing ping pong ball through an obstacle course. Ball/Walk was a countertop game that involved maneuvering a steel ball up a pair of metal rods. In 1970, Cointronics released Lunar Lander, a solid-state electro-mechanical game, similar to Bally's 1969 Space Flight in which the player tried to land a toy model of a lunar lander on the moon. Lunar Lander used tapes of "actual sounds and voices of Apollo Flights.” White and Ball had unsuccessfully tried to obtain permission to use Neil Armstrong’s voice but decided to use it anyway since their tax dollars had paid for the space flights. Other Cointronics games included Computer Dice and Interceptor. Cointronics did not last long. By October 1970 It was out of business (Billboard 10/17/70). It never produced a video game[14]. So did Richard Ball propose the idea of a coin-operated video game in 1968? If so, he likely would have been one of the first, if not the first, to do so (at least within the coin-op industry) and it might explain why Bill Nutting was willing to take a flyer on the concept when Nolan Bushnell proposed the same thing a few years later. So far, however, no other evidence has turned up to substantiate Ball's claim.

NOTES

[1] dcourier.com/print.asp?ArticleID=57625&SectionID=1&SubSectionID=1, Social Security Death Index.

[2] The 1944 Tabula yearbook for Oak Park and River Forest High School, lists Nutting's activities as "Aviation Club 1; Roosevelt High School, Ypsilanti, Mich. 2" indicating that he might have attended high school in Michigan for his freshman and sophomore years.

[3] World War II Army Enlistment Records indicate that Nutting had "3 years of high school" and worked as a sales clerk. On the other hand, Nutting's photo appeared in his 1944 high school year book, so he may have dropped out midway through his senior year.

[4] Nisbet filed a patent on the game on January 7, 1964 with Edex as the assignee. It appears that Nisbet had formerly worked for Lockheed.

[5] Cash Box called The Knowledge Computer “an amusement machine created by Edex Corporation” and noted that it was “in use on such locations as bowling alleys, student unions, and transportation depots. It is also available as a non-coin-operated teaching device for such purposes as employee education and training.” Billboard, reporting on the “Coinmen of America” convention in Chicago, noted that “Scientific Amusement’s two Knowledge Computors, shown by Howard Starr and Bill Nutting, were given acid play tests during the three-day exhibition.” The October 31 issue included a photo of the machine. Scientific Amusement may have been a subsidiary or trade name used by Edex. The October 17, 1964 issue of Billboard includes a list of MOA Exhibitors. “Scientific Amusement Co. Edex Corp” is listed as occupying booth 64 with William G. Nutting as the representative. 

[6] The brief blurb in Billboard notes that “Lou Wolcher of Advanced Automatic Sales Co., San Francisco has found a new popularity for quiz game. The Knowledge Computer of Nutting Corp., which his company distributes, has jumped quite substantially in sales during the last three months. Some 20 to 25 operators are now handling the equipment, with wide distribution in the San Francisco Bay area.” No other information on the company has been unearthed, nor is it known why (or if) Bill Nutting formed a new company. The 1967 Menlo Park city directory still lists Bill Nutting as a salesman for Edex, though the info may have been out of date.

[7] In a profile in the July 1980 issue of RePlay, Michigan distributor Gene Wagner, who later partnered with Dave Nutting to distribute IQ Computer, claims that he first met Dave at the 1963 MOA show where Dave was exhibiting Knowledge Computer. Given the game’s patent date and the fact that Billboard did not list Edex, Scientific Amusement Company, or Nutting Corp as attending the 1963 MOA show, it seems likely that Wolcher was referring to the 1964 show or a later show.

[8] E-mail from Dave Nutting to Marty Goldberg. Billboard, August 10, 1968 US Patent database. Montgomery received three patents on the device: one filed November 19, 1968, one with Dave Nutting filed June 30, 1969, and one with Nutting and Roger J. Budnik filed October 20, 1969. All three were assigned to Nutting Industries Ltd.

[9] Articles of Incorporation, Nutting Associates.

[10] In 1971, Nutting Industries was renamed Milwaukee Coin Industries (Cash Box 9/25/71). Dave Nutting later formed Dave Nutting Associates, which designed games for Bally/Midway, including Gorf, Gun Fight, and Sea Wolf, among others.

[11] The 11/67 date is from Cash Box magazine’s equipment inventory, which listed “approximate production dates” for games. Cash Box lists IQ Computer as a 10/68 release, but the December 9, 1967 issue of Billboard mentioned that Nutting Industries was distributing the game in Detroit.  

[12] Cash Box (3/15/69) reports that Nutting had appointed Geiman, who formerly worked at the Micropoint Pen Company, as vice president. At the time, it appears that Hailstone had not yet left the company as the same issue mentions that Hailstone had just returned from the National Putting Course and Driving Range Convention. Ralstin’s hiring as sales manager was announced in the September 27, 1969 issue of Cash Box and his appointment as marketing director in the October 18, 1969 issue, which noted that he had been with Nutting for “several weeks.”

[13] The claim appeared in a response by Judith Guertin to an article by Benj Edwards (2011) and was repeated in the Wikipedia article on Nutting Associates - though one may have copied the other. Though neither gives a source for the information, it may have come from Richard Ball. Ball repeated the claim in an interview with researcher Alexander Smith - though it is unclear if he mentioned the game’s name during the interview. Ransom White does not recall proposing a video game to Nutting.

[14] Ransom White recalls that they produced a space game that they showed at an industry show but never released, though it appears that it was not a video game

SOURCES

To be provided after final post in series.