Included with general admission ($12.50 beginning at 2:30 p.m. on October 3)<\/p>\n
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 about his career at Atari, his creation of the iconic Pong<\/em>, 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<\/em> on stage against Alcorn himself.<\/p>\n 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.<\/em><\/p>\n Al Alcorn Bio<\/strong><\/p>\n 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<\/em> and several early video games and led the development of many of Atari\u2019s 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.\u00a0In 1993, he started a company that created the first multimedia slot machine, which revolutionized the slot machine industry.\u00a0 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.\u00a0He holds a Bachelor of Science in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from the University of California, Berkeley.<\/p>","excerpt":"","slug":"panel-discussion-with-pong-designer-al-alcorn","image":{"url":"https:\/\/www.museumofplay.org\/app\/uploads\/2025\/09\/Alcorn-800x800-1.png","id":28330,"extension":"png","width":800,"height":800,"filesize":766661,"sizes":{"medium":{"width":300,"height":300,"mime-type":"image\/png","filesize":110754,"url":"https:\/\/www.museumofplay.org\/app\/uploads\/2025\/09\/Alcorn-800x800-1-300x300.png"},"thumbnail":{"width":150,"height":150,"mime-type":"image\/png","filesize":32211,"url":"https:\/\/www.museumofplay.org\/app\/uploads\/2025\/09\/Alcorn-800x800-1-150x150.png"},"medium_large":{"width":768,"height":768,"mime-type":"image\/png","filesize":630592,"url":"https:\/\/www.museumofplay.org\/app\/uploads\/2025\/09\/Alcorn-800x800-1-768x768.png"},"featured-blog":{"width":520,"height":780,"mime-type":"image\/png","filesize":498758,"url":"https:\/\/www.museumofplay.org\/app\/uploads\/2025\/09\/Alcorn-800x800-1-520x780.png"},"genesis-singular-images":{"width":780,"height":400,"mime-type":"image\/png","filesize":343794,"url":"https:\/\/www.museumofplay.org\/app\/uploads\/2025\/09\/Alcorn-800x800-1-780x400.png"},"singular-full-width":{"width":800,"height":660,"mime-type":"image\/png","filesize":637917,"url":"https:\/\/www.museumofplay.org\/app\/uploads\/2025\/09\/Alcorn-800x800-1-800x660.png"},"video-games":{"width":384,"height":497,"mime-type":"image\/png","filesize":238441,"url":"https:\/\/www.museumofplay.org\/app\/uploads\/2025\/09\/Alcorn-800x800-1-384x497.png"},"gb-block-post-grid-landscape":{"width":600,"height":400,"mime-type":"image\/png","filesize":282196,"url":"https:\/\/www.museumofplay.org\/app\/uploads\/2025\/09\/Alcorn-800x800-1-600x400.png"},"gb-block-post-grid-square":{"width":600,"height":600,"mime-type":"image\/png","filesize":402135,"url":"https:\/\/www.museumofplay.org\/app\/uploads\/2025\/09\/Alcorn-800x800-1-600x600.png"}}},"all_day":false,"start_date":"2025-10-03 15:00:00","start_date_details":{"year":"2025","month":"10","day":"03","hour":"15","minutes":"00","seconds":"00"},"end_date":"2025-10-03 16:00:00","end_date_details":{"year":"2025","month":"10","day":"03","hour":"16","minutes":"00","seconds":"00"},"utc_start_date":"2025-10-03 19:00:00","utc_start_date_details":{"year":"2025","month":"10","day":"03","hour":"19","minutes":"00","seconds":"00"},"utc_end_date":"2025-10-03 20:00:00","utc_end_date_details":{"year":"2025","month":"10","day":"03","hour":"20","minutes":"00","seconds":"00"},"timezone":"America\/New_York","timezone_abbr":"EDT","cost":"","cost_details":{"currency_symbol":"$","currency_code":"USD","currency_position":"prefix","values":[]},"website":"","show_map":true,"show_map_link":true,"hide_from_listings":false,"sticky":false,"featured":false,"categories":[{"name":"Included with Admission","slug":"included-with-admission","term_group":0,"term_taxonomy_id":66,"taxonomy":"tribe_events_cat","description":"","parent":0,"count":638,"filter":"raw","meta":[],"id":66,"urls":{"self":"https:\/\/www.museumofplay.org\/wp-json\/tribe\/events\/v1\/categories\/66","collection":"https:\/\/www.museumofplay.org\/wp-json\/tribe\/events\/v1\/categories"}}],"tags":[],"venue":{"id":20285,"author":"82","status":"publish","date":"2023-06-27 13:45:24","date_utc":"2023-06-27 17:45:24","modified":"2023-06-27 13:45:24","modified_utc":"2023-06-27 17:45:24","url":"https:\/\/www.museumofplay.org\/venue\/paychex-theater\/","venue":"Paychex Theater","slug":"paychex-theater","json_ld":{"@type":"Place","name":"Paychex Theater","description":"","url":"https:\/\/www.museumofplay.org\/venue\/paychex-theater\/","address":{"@type":"PostalAddress"},"telephone":"","sameAs":""},"show_map":true,"show_map_link":true,"global_id":"www.museumofplay.org?id=20285","global_id_lineage":["www.museumofplay.org?id=20285"]},"organizer":[],"custom_fields":[],"json_ld":{"@context":"http:\/\/schema.org","@type":"Event","name":"Presentation and Discussion with Pong Designer Al Alcorn","description":"<p>Included with general admission ($12.50 beginning at 2:30 p.m. on October 3) Calling all gamers, techies, and history buffs! 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