What's the score? The time. Our signed Pong Clock # 283.

As Pong randomly plays, the score shown is the time of day on this unusual timepiece by Sander Mulder / Buro Vormkrijgers. In the old school Pong you could put the paddles in such a position, that the ball kept bouncing forever.

Quite hypnotic, and it became the inspiration for this time-killer/clock. The release of the limited edition of 400 Pong Clocks created such a hype that it sold out in 1 day. We are happy to have Pong Clock #283 from the original owner Julian Brannigan, UK in the museum's collection. The Designer Sander Mulder  signed our Pong Clock in December 2009. See the photos here.

Requires jQuery 1.3. Demo : http://www.geoffray.be/lab/pong/

I look forward to collect more systems and share some interesting facts about video ping-pong and its history. Please come back - this is a project in process.

 

 Greetings from Berlin,
 Oliver, curator

Mr Baer signed our museum´s Odyssey 200 in Berlin on July 29, 2009. Mr. Baer visited Berlin to celebrate the online launch of the "History of Video Games Timeline" by Computerspiele Museum Berlin.

As part of his insane goal to produce a game a week for the next year, British coder Jayenkai produced this fusion of Tetris and Pong, Tetripong, which has you trying to clear lines of blocks as you would in a traditional Tetris game, except with the bouncing Pong balls threatening to knock out essential blocks from your game.

To add even more anxiety, there's a mechanic that slowly fills your screen with water, only draining when you clear a line in the game.

You can download Tetripong for free from our Pong software section

Zanussi, a well known Italian furniture company, released two game systems: Ping-O-Tronic, an analog game first released in late 1974 but really successful during 1975, and Play-O-Tronic, an AY-3-8500 game released in 1977 (this particular model was also released by Universum in Germany). Zanussi obtained the Sanders Associates License Agreement on April 21st, 1975. Zanussi reported 21,514 Play-O-Tronic units sold between October 1st and December 31st, 1977 (3 months) for a total amount of 620,408,000 lire, on which a 5.5% royalty was paid to Sanders (34,122,440 lire). Considering this amount, each game would have cost around 28,800 lire during this period, which seems quite low. Unfortunately there is no similar information for Ping-O-Tronic.

Click on the pictures to get a bigger view.

More Info about the Zanussi Pong at pong-story.com

Atari was having problems with Pong clones selling better than Atari’s machines. Part of their problem was the coin-operated amusement industry distribution system, in which regional vendors had exclusive contracts.

If one provider carried Atari, others in the area could not. Everyone wanted a piece of the lucrative Pong action, and clones were the solution for non-Atari vendors. Read the complete Article.

The savvy designer incorporated a series of "LEDs and touchpad sensors" into the otherwise plainly-styled piece of furniture in order to provide a fresh rendition of a heralded classic.

The table was diplayed at MoMA in 2008.

Mr. Baer visited Berlin to celebrate the online launch of the "History of Video Games Timeline" by Computerspiele Museum Berlin. See the photos here.

See the first 8 minutes of the keynote by Mr. Baer, a short introduction to the very first years of Video Games. Sorry for the sound - the PA was near to be defect.

Ort:
homebase Lounge Berlin
Köthener Str. 44 (Lageplan)
10963 Berlin
Beginn: 29.7.2009 - 19 Uhr
Der Eintritt ist frei.

What's the score? The time. As Pong randomly plays, the score shown is the time of day on this unusual timepiece by Buro Vormkrijgers.

The release of the limited edition of 400 Pong Clocks created such a hype in 2006 that it sold out in 1 day. We are happy to have Pong Clock #283 from the original owner Julian Brannigan, UK in the museum's collection.

Read more about the Pong Clock here.

Please read our Golden Book

compatible to Hanimex TVG 070 C. The control panel on the console is composed of 10 buttons to select the different games offered by each cartridge (10 being the maximum). Difficulty switches, power switch and a start button can also be found. 

Et oui, Pong a 40 ans ! Et depuis quelques jours son musée en ligne : le PONG Museum !!!

(les éléments en italiques proviennent du site ecrans, oui, je sais, je en suis qu'une vile feignasse XD )

In the year 1958 a physicist named William Higinbotham demonstrated a remarkable game called Tennis for Two.

Higinbotham, head of the Instrumentation Division at Brookhaven National Laboratory, designed his game as an exhibit to improve what was an otherwise lackluster visitors' day at the lab. Tennis for Two presented a tennis court - shown from the side - on an oscilloscope screen, where handheld controllers allowed the two players to toss the ball to each other. Each controller had two controls: a button and a knob. With the button, you could hit the ball at any time of your choosing when it was on your side of the net, and with the knob you could choose the angle at which the ball was hit.

The game was based on the best contemporary technology: analog electronic computers built out of op-amps, relays, and the occasional transistor. Of course, some things have changed over the last 50 years. Using convenient modern electronics, the guys at evilmadscientist.com have designed a functional and playable replica of the original that can be put together by a hobbyist in a couple of evenings. You can watch the video of the recreation on YouTube.

Thank you for promoting the museum :-) But what language is this?

Thanks to retroguiden.blogspot.com for the nice words ;-)

Publisher's description of iPong:

License: Free - made by thedailygrind.com.au
Operating Systems: Mac OS X 10.3 and up

Heathkit's GD-1999

Games zijn groter dan ooit op dit moment. Iedereen heeft wel een next-gen console in huis of heeft er iig eentje aanschouwd en bespeeld. We worden doodgegooid met termen als polygonen, 1080P, ragdoll physics, MMORPG en wat al niet meer.
 

Daarom vandaag een stap terug in de tijd. Pongmuseum.com heeft haar virtuele deuren geopened. Hierin kan je alle informatie vinden over deze oervader/moeder van de huidige game consoles, waaronder een filmpje uit 1969 van Ralph H. Bear, uitvinder van Pong, die samen met een collega Pong speelt.

Thanks to www.willekeurigheid.nl for featuring the museum.

Im Pongmuseum gibt es nun für alle, die sich erinnern wollen, eine Sammlung Pong-Konsolen und viele Hintergrundinfos. Eines der Highlights: ein Video aus dem Jahr 1969 mit dem Pong-Prototyp.

Among the Bigfoot Museum (Willow Creek, CA) and The Hobo Museum (Britt, IA) the Pong Museum found a honorable place on the list. Sure, we´r kinda proud - thanks to Sam & Rob for featuring the museum - well, there's something wrong with us...

See the complete museums list here.

See the complete Tech Talks at www.youtube.com

http://downloads.bbc.co.uk/podcasts/fivelive/

by Terrence O'Brien, posted Feb 12th 2009

...and the ball was square

The museum is officially opened since 27 January 2009 to commemorate the 40th anniversary of the video ping-pong and the birthday of the Magnavox Odyssey 37 years ago. My dear late Grandad had this very first machine - he never beat me, I let him win, honest…*cough*.

Thanks to Nick Craske for featuring the museum.

Ein neues, virtuelles Museum, das sich ausschließlich Pong und den verschiedensten Klonen widmet, ist seit wenigen Tagen eröffnet: Pongmuseum.com. Das Besondere: Für alle, die gerne einmal nach guter, alter Homebrew-Tradition selbst eine Pong-Konsole zusammenlöten möchten, denen bietet der Museumsshop einen Pong-Bausatz für 35 Euro.

http://www.retromagazine.eu/retro/

Avoid missing: the Pong Museum opens its virtual doors
Thanks to Brandon for featuriing the museum!

Even better, though, is the video Baer sent in to the site of he and hardware tech Bill Harrison playing some of the first ever rounds of multiplayer videogames, showing a surprisingly organic looking game compared to the strict vectors of the later versions (this version had a separate knob for fakeout curveballs).

 

The site's webshop even includes a DIY build-your-own-Pong-kit, which, unfortunately, appears to be PAL only for now, though they do ship to the US. 

Read more about the "Tennis For Two" recreation

is programmed by Tim Hoffmann & Nadja Kutz in JavaScript. ToPong is a pong for one player, which lives on a Torus (=doughnut) in 3D space. The movement of the ball is along geodesics on that torus. Geodesics are locally shortest or straightest connections of two points.

EgoPong is also a pong for one player, however it lives on a "flat torus" and hence the geodesics here are just straight lines.

Read more about EgoPong and ToPong

Many thanks to jrhunt for promoting the museum!

Thanks to bohus at retrothing.com for promoting the museum !

In 1969 Ralph H. Baer and Bill Harrison played their first game of Pong - the first video game anywhere. It took about three years of research, development, and persuasion to get their bosses to let them spend time in this video frontier. The two engineers saw the television screen as a blank slate for electronic interactivity, and with millions of screens in homes all over the world they were right to take on such an ambitious project.

Pongmuseum.com is a new site dedicated to telling Pong's story. Not only will you learn the many facets of the tale of the square bouncing ball that changed the world, you'll also see a collection of dozens of fine photographs of home Pong consoles. You may think that the Pong tale is a simple one, but I found myself quite absorbed by the embryonic origins of today's multi-kajillion dollar video game industry. Besides, I still like talking smack during a good game of Pong Ultra IV now and then.

Pong var det første spil, der kunne bruges med et fjernsyn, og var forgængeren for alle de konsoller, vi kender i dag. Pong blev skabt af Ralph H. Baer i 1969 ud fra en idé, hans kollega Bill Rusch fik i 1967. Det første kommercielle produkt kom på gaden 3 år senere i 1972, da Magnavox lancerede Odyssey. Senere samme år frigav Atari en arcademaskine baseret på Pong, der hurtigt blev et stort hit og årsag til den første retssag inden for den spirende elektroniske spilindustri.

På museet kan man bl.a. se en video fra 1969, hvor Baer spiller Pong sammen med Bill Harrison, der blev tilknyttet projektet i 1967.

Pong a 40 ans ! Et depuis quelques jours son musée en ligne : le pongmuseum. (en anglais)

En 1966, Ralph Baer, technicien chez Sanders Associates, conçoit un système permettant de jouer sur une télévision normale. Rien qu’aux Etats-Unis, 40 millions de foyers sont alors équipés. Le dispositif comprend alors un jeu vidéo de poursuite et un de tennis. Ses idées sont brevetées et il crée plusieurs prototypes. Trois années plus tard, en 1969, Ralph H. Baer et Bill Harrison jouaient, sous l’objectif d’une caméra, au premier jeu vidéo sur téléviseur. Il faudra ensuite attendre 1972 pour que Magnavox sorte sa console, la Magnavox Odyssey, et que Nolan Bushnell, co-fondateur d’Atari, commercialise le jeu sous son nom Pong.

Créé par l’allemand Oliver, le pongmuseum est essentiellement consacré à l’historique du jeu vidéo. La rubrique Collection propose ainsi un petit retour dans l’histoire des consoles, de l’APF - Match à la Video-Sports - Skylark-124.

We're grateful for any kind of help by building the manual download section.

Back in 1976, only monitors and hi-tech equipment had a composite input. To use this system, the user had to open his TV set in order to connect a few wires to its electronic circuits. This is the case with the Heathkit TV sets: the user manual explains how to connect the system to several TV sets released by Heathkit. The Lightgun reminds those old laser guns from old TV series. It is quite ergonomic, but uses a simple push-button as trigger. The case is still excellent.

Heathkit - GD 1380 Kit