# Sunnyvale Historical Society commemorates site of first Pong game > Source: > Published: 2026-06-14 14:00:41+00:00 **Getting your** [Trinity Audio](//trinityaudio.ai)player ready...The man who designed Pong was 24 years old when he installed the first arcade version of the video game at a bar in Sunnyvale in 1972. Allan Alcorn returned to the same spot on June 10 after the city’s historical society unveiled a plaque to commemorate the installation of Atari’s flagship video game. Alcorn was Atari’s third employee when the company released Pong, which has cemented its place in Silicon Valley history and the digital cultural zeitgeist as one of the first video games. According to Alcorn, Pong was supposed to be a “throwaway” game. He told the dozen or so community members who turned out for the unveiling that Atari founder Nolan Bushnell assigned him the “simplest game he could think of, as an exercise.” But the game became so popular that the machine in Sunnyvale broke because the bucket inside had overflowed with quarters, causing the wire to disengage. “Next day, I went back to work, and I said, ‘Nolan, I found the problem: Goddamn thing’s making too much money,'” Alcorn recalled. A Sunnyvale Heritage Park Museum board member led the charge to commemorate Pong’s placement at what is now Rooster T. Feathers comedy club. “Margaret Lawson raises her hand and starts to talk about her daughter, who played Pong, and that we needed to signify where Pong had first been placed, and it had been placed right here in Sunnyvale,” said museum president Tiffany Anderson. Heather Barbieri, owner of Rooster T. Feathers, said proudly that she comes from a family of “Atari people,” adding that her younger brother “had to have one” when the first Atari console came out. She recalled her father developing blisters on his hand from using the joystick to play a later Atari game. Barbieri was too young to enter Andy Capp’s Tavern, the bar where Pong was first installed, and she said she was surprised to find out the history behind the building she acquired 25 years ago. “How great that the very first beta test of a video game, which is such a huge industry, was here at the club that I bought,” Barbieri said. The first Pong game machine is now in the Computer History Museum in Mountain View. Although Alcorn didn’t anticipate the game’s success, he noted its widespread appeal. “I think one of the reasons it was successful was because, unlike many other pinball machines and stuff, you could participate in athletics while maintaining a firm grip on a can of beer; you could be drunk off your ass and still play it,” Alcorn said. “And women could play it, whereas the pinball machines in those days were really graphic…and this was done to be acceptable.” Since Atari, Alcorn went on to start a slot machine company called Silicon Gaming, which manufactured slot machines in Palo Alto before licensing, approving and shipping them to Las Vegas. He also started a company that used technology to identify television and radio consumption. He expressed pride at being called a disruptor in the industry. “I was one of the troublemakers, and I kind of like that, because I basically take an existing industry and apply new technology to that industry and change the whole industry,” Alcorn said. As one of the pioneers of Silicon Valley, Alcorn said the path Silicon Valley is on now is “a little disturbing.” He’s wary of the many companies pursuing artificial intelligence. “I think the venture capital stuff has gotten to out of hand, too much greed,” Alcorn said. “I mean, there can’t be that many companies all pursuing artificial intelligence for them all to succeed.”