David Judd Nutting is a graduate of the Pratt Institute

Pratt Institute

Pratt Institute is a private art college in New York City located in Brooklyn, New York, with satellite campuses in Manhattan and Utica. Pratt is one of the leading undergraduate art schools in the United States and offers programs in Architecture, Graphic Design, History of Art and Design,...

 with a degree in industrial design

Industrial design

Industrial design is the use of a combination of applied art and applied science to improve the aesthetics, ergonomics, and usability of a product, but it may also be used to improve the product's marketability and production...

. After leaving the Army Corps of Engineers, he joined the design firm of Brooks Stevens Associates. During his time there he was involved in a wide variety of projects, working on everything from Evinrude Outboard Motors

Evinrude Outboard Motors

Evinrude Outboard Motors is a company that builds a major brand of outboard motors for boats. Founded by Ole Evinrude in Milwaukee, Wisconsin in 1907, it was formerly owned by the publicly traded Outboard Marine Corporation , and is now owned by privately held Bombardier Recreational Products.-...

, Mirro

Mirro Aluminum Company

The roots of the Mirro Aluminum Company, commonly known as Mirro, can be traced to the 1885 founding of the Aluminum Manufacturing Company by Joseph Koenig in Two Rivers, Wisconsin. In 1909 Aluminum Manufacturing Company merged with Aluminum Novelty Company, founded in neighboring Manitowoc,...

 cookware, Bolens tractors, Studebaker

Studebaker

Studebaker Corporation was a United States wagon and automobile manufacturer based in South Bend, Indiana. Founded in 1852 and incorporated in 1868 under the name of the Studebaker Brothers Manufacturing Company, the company was originally a producer of wagons for farmers, miners, and the...

, and 3M

3M

3M Company , formerly known as the Minnesota Mining and Manufacturing Company, is an American multinational conglomerate corporation based in Maplewood, Minnesota, United States....

. For Willys

Willys

Willys was the brand name used by Willys-Overland Motors, an American automobile company best known for its design and production of military Jeeps and civilian versions during the 20th century.-Early History:In 1908, John Willys bought the Overland Automotive Division of Standard Wheel Company...

, Nutting designed Jeep Grand Wagoneer, and went on to design the Enstrom Helicopter

Enstrom Helicopter

The Enstrom Helicopter Corporation is an American design and manufacturing company. It is located at the Menominee-Marinette Twin County Airport in Michigan. The basic company was founded in 1959 by mining engineer Rudolph J. "Rudy" Enstrom, initially as the R.J. Enstrom Corp..-History:Enstrom...

.

Dave Nutting started Dave Nutting Associates as a general design and engineering firm in 1970. In 1974 Dave saw a LED

LEd

LEd is a TeX/LaTeX editing software working under Microsoft Windows. It is a freeware product....

-display clock in the window of a store, bought it, and turned it over to Jeff Frederiksen to reverse engineer how it worked. Using the ideas they learned from its operation they built a pinball

Pinball

Pinball is a type of arcade game, usually coin-operated, where a player attempts to score points by manipulating one or more metal balls on a playfield inside a glass-covered case called a pinball machine. The primary objective of the game is to score as many points as possible...

 machine that was run by a small microprocessor

Microprocessor

A microprocessor incorporates the functions of a computer's central processing unit on a single integrated circuit, or at most a few integrated circuits. It is a multipurpose, programmable device that accepts digital data as input, processes it according to instructions stored in its memory, and...

 that used similar LEDs for the score display. Compared to the mechanical versions the microprocessor replaced, the new design had almost no moving parts and was therefore considerably more reliable. Bally did not use the design immediately, so Nutting sold it to a small company in Phoenix, AZ, who introduced Spirit of '76

Spirit of '76 (game)

Spirit of '76 was the first microprocessor-based pinball table. The table was based on the technology Dave Nutting Associates had created for Bally in 1974. The firm licensed the technology to Mirco Games in 1975 to create the table, since Bally was not initially interested in the system...

in 1975, before giving up on the pinball market. Bally introduced their own versions in 1976, forcing Williams

Williams (gaming company)

WMS Industries, Inc. is an American electronic gaming and amusement company based in Waukegan, Illinois. The company's main operating subsidiaries are WMS Gaming and Orion Gaming. WMS traces its roots as far back as 1943, the Williams Manufacturing Company, founded by Harry E. Williams...

, Gottlieb

Gottlieb

Gottlieb was an arcade game corporation based in Chicago, Illinois. The company was established by David Gottlieb in 1927, initially producing pinball machines while later expanding into various other games including pitch-and-bats, bowling games, and eventually video arcade games .Like other...

, and Chicago Coin

Chicago Coin

Chicago Coin was one of the early major manufacturers of pinball tables. Chicago Coin, founded in 1931, would make pingames and modern pinball machines for over 45 years before being sold to the Stern family in 1977 and becoming Stern Electronics, Inc....

 to rush to catch up. When Williams developed its own system, it ended up copying Dave Nutting's design, so Bally sued for patent infringement but lost the lawsuit.

Around this time, Nutting was being acquired by Bally. During the later 1970s and early 1980s, Nutting increasingly turned to pure video-game design. The company's games include Gun Fight

Gun Fight

Gun Fight, known as Western Gun in Japan and Europe, is a 1975 arcade shooter game designed by Tomohiro Nishikado, and released by Taito in Japan and Europe and by Midway Games in the United States. It was a historically significant game, and a success in the arcades. It was later ported to the...

(a redesign of the Taito

Taito

Taito may mean:*Taito Corporation, a Japanese developer of video game software and arcade hardware*Taito, Tokyo, a special ward located in Tokyo, Japan*Taito, also known as matai, paramount chiefs according to Fa'a Samoa...

 arcade game Western Gun), Sea Wolf

Sea Wolf (arcade game)

Sea Wolf is an arcade game by Midway, originally released in 1976. It was a video game update of an earlier coin-operated electro-mechanical Midway game, Sea Devil, itself based on Sega's 1966 coin-op electro-mechanical arcade submarine simulator Periscope...

, Wizard of Wor

Wizard Of Wor

Wizard of Wor is an arcade game from 1981 , developed by Midway. Other systems it was ported to include the Atari 800, Commodore 64, the Atari 2600, Atari 5200 and the Bally Astrocade as "The Incredible Wizard". The title of the game is often misspelled as "Wizard of War"...

, and Gorf

Gorf

Gorf is an arcade game released in 1981 by Midway Mfg., whose name was advertised as an acronym for "Galactic Orbiting Robot Force". It is a multiple-mission fixed shooter with five distinct modes of play, essentially making it five games in one...

, and the company also created the Astrocade game console for Bally. Bally shut down Dave Nutting Associates in 1984, possibly for reasons related to the video game crash of 1983

Video game crash of 1983

The North American video game crash was a serious event that brought an abrupt end to what is considered the second generation of console video gaming in North America. Beginning in 1983, the crash almost destroyed the then-fledgling industry and led to the bankruptcy of several companies producing...

.

Dave Nutting has since become an author, writing on science and quantum mechanics in The Language of Nature.