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» MEDIA (3) Impalla SS with Vette Heads 1996 Corvette LT4 330HP Roadster 68 RS/SS Convertible Camaro

I watched this show tonight on CNBC. It was actually quite entertaining, particularly the historical parts.

Nolan Bushnell, the guy who started Atari used to work for a company called Ampex, which happens to be the same company that my dad worked for at the time. Ampex was one of those great US engineering firms of the 60's and 70's that died out due to bad decision making by management. But some really great people used to work there, like Dolby. Ampex invented the helical scan head used in every VCR ever made. For some reason, at the time they didn't see any commercial market for the technology and so sold it to a little know Japanese company called JVC.

I recently ran across an article by John Gillooly over at apcstart.com (I was there when John first discovered Tequila, and let me tell you, it wasn't pretty). In his article, he talks about another great site dedicated to the demise of the Atari 2600. It's another great read on the state of the industry from the 80's. Here's the link if you are interested http://atari.digital-madman.com/index.html.

Another interesting bit was that Steve Jobs and Wozniac used to work for Atari, and they were responsible for one of their best selling original games, breakout. When they left Atari they offered Bushnell 1/3 ownership in Apple for $50k. Unfortunately he turned them down.

External Link: http://http://www.firingsquad.com/news/newsarticle...