Presentation and Discussion with Pong Designer Al Alcorn

Included with general admission ($12.50 beginning at 2:30 p.m. on October 3)

Calling all gamers, techies, and history buffs! The Strong National Museum of Play welcomes video game designer and industry legend Al Alcorn for an in-depth presentation on his career at Atari, his creation of the iconic Pong, and his game design legacy. This is a unique opportunity to hear from Alcorn in person about his decades of trailblazing work in the video game industry, followed by a question-and-answer session. Select attendees, drawn by raffle, will also have the exclusive chance to play Pong on stage against Alcorn himself.

After the presentation, college students will have the special chance for a meet-and-greet with Alcorn and other legendary video game trailblazer Don Daglow.

Al Alcorn Bio

Allan Alcorn is an electrical engineer and computer scientist who was the third employee of Atari and Vice president of R&D, who designed Pong and several early video games and led the development of many of Atari’s products until 1980. After Atari, he worked at Apple as an Apple Fellow, where he led a project that developed advanced digital video compression that led to the MPEG video compression standard. In 1993, he started a company that created the first multimedia slot machine, which revolutionized the slot machine industry.  In 1998, he was a founder of a toy company, Zowie, that spun out of Interval Research. He has recently been made a fellow of the Computer History Museum. He holds a Bachelor of Science in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from the University of California, Berkeley.