Ted Dabney is the often uncredited co-founder of Syzygy and Atari

Atari

Atari is a corporate and brand name owned by several entities since its inception in 1972. It is currently owned by Atari Interactive, a wholly owned subsidiary of the French publisher Atari, SA . The original Atari, Inc. was founded in 1972 by Nolan Bushnell and Ted Dabney. It was a pioneer in...

. While working at Ampex

Ampex

Ampex is an American electronics company founded in 1944 by Alexander M. Poniatoff. The name AMPEX is an acronym, created by its founder, which stands for Alexander M. Poniatoff Excellence...

 Ted met Nolan Bushnell

Nolan Bushnell

Nolan K. Bushnell is an American engineer and entrepreneur who founded both Atari, Inc and the Chuck E. Cheese's Pizza-Time Theaters chain...

 and the two jointly created Syzygy with their first product being Computer Space

Computer Space

Computer Space is a video arcade game released in November 1971 by Nutting Associates. Created by Nolan Bushnell and Ted Dabney, who would both later found Atari, Inc., it is generally accepted that it was the world's first commercially sold coin-operated video game — and indeed, the first...

 which was manufactured and sold by Nutting Associates

Nutting Associates

Nutting Associates was an early arcade game manufacturer from Mountain View, California, formed in 1968 by Bill Nutting. They introduced a number of mechanical coin-operated games, starting with a quiz game known as Computer Quiz, and moving on to more common fare like shooting games.In August...

. Following Computer Space Ted Dabney's video circuit that was created for Computer Space was used by Al Alcorn

Al Alcorn

Allan Alcorn is an American pioneering engineer and computer scientist. He grew up in San Francisco, California, and attended the University of California, Berkeley, graduating with a Bachelor of Science degree in Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences in 1971.- Atari and Pong :He worked for...

 to create Pong

Pong

Pong is one of the earliest arcade video games, and is a tennis sports game featuring simple two-dimensional graphics. While other arcade video games such as Computer Space came before it, Pong was one of the first video games to reach mainstream popularity...

with assistance from Ted and Nolan. Ted remained out of the public eye after departing Atari and his role in creating the first commercially produced coin-op video game as well as Syzygy and Atari was often omitted or marginalized with several myths attached. Ted appeared on the RetroGaming Roundup podcast in October 2010 and told his story in a two hour interview. A transcript of the interview is hosted on the RetroGaming Roundup site as well as ComputerSpaceFan.