Co-Founder of Atari Ted Dabney Passes Away at Age 81

Ted Dabney, who co-founded Atari in 1972, has died at age 81.

This news came from his close friend Leonard Herman. Herman posted on Facebook that “I just learned that my good friend, Ted Dabney, the co-founder of Atari, passed away at the age of 81. RIP dear friend. Your legacy will live on a long time!”

Dabney was influential in the early days of Atari and video game development but is often unacknowledged. Born as Samuel F. “Ted” Dabney on May 15, 1937, in San Francisco, he had enlisted in the United States Marine Corps after graduating high school because of his interest in electronics and computer development.

Before Atari, Dabney co-founded Syzygy Engineering in 1971 with Nolan Bushnell where they had launched one of the first commercial arcade games called Computer Space. A year later, Dabney and Bushnell started Atari and soon after they released the widely known and immensely popular game, Pong, developed by Allan Alcorn.

In late 2017, Dabney was diagnosed with esophageal cancer. According to Eurogamer, Dabney decided not to treat it since he was told he had eight months to live.