Video games were not invented in 1972, but that was the year they began reaching a much wider public.
In 1958, physicist William Higinbotham wired a tennis game to an oscilloscope for visitors at Brookhaven National Laboratory in New York. People queued to play Tennis for Two, but it was never sold.
In 1972, two machines brought video games to the public. The Magnavox Odyssey became the first home console, plugging into the family television. Months later, a young California company called Atari put a test version of Pong in Andy Capp’s Tavern, a bar in Sunnyvale.
Within days, it stopped working. The coin box was too full of quarters.
Pong, with its two paddles, square ball and scoreboard, became an early commercial sensation, helping establish the arcade video game business.
By the end of the decade, arcades were packed with cabinets. Atari’s 2600 console, launched in 1977, helped popularise interchangeable game cartridges, allowing players to buy new games without buying a new machine.