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Samuel Frederick "Ted" Dabney Jr. (May 2, 1937 – May 26, 2018) was an American electrical engineer, and the co-founder, alongside Nolan Bushnell, of Atari, Inc. He is recognized as developing the basics of video circuitry principles that were used for Computer Space and later Pong, one of the first and most successful .
Dabney and Bushnell jointly created a partnership called Syzygy (named after astronomy term representing an alignment of celestial bodies) in 1971. When they decided to incorporate, they discovered another company had that name and therefore established their corporation under the name Atari, Inc., based on the Go term equivalent to chess's "check", as both had been avid fans of the game. Their first product was Computer Space, inspired by having seen Spacewar! running at various computer laboratories. Dabney created a motion system using a video circuit made up of cheap analog and digital components of a standard television set rather than acquire an expensive computer, while Bushnell designed its cabinet and worked with Nutting Associates to manufacture the game at scale. Bushnell used this to convince Al Alcorn, another Ampex employee, to leave and join Atari to help program more of these games. Under Bushnell's direction, Alcorn used Dabney's video circuit concept to create the programming for Atari's next game, Pong. Dabney constructed the coin slot mechanism portion of the cabinet. Once their one-off version proved successful, they ramped up production for scale, with Dabney overseeing the manufacturing process. Pong became the first successful arcade video game.
As Pong became successful, Dabney felt overshadowed by both Bushnell and Alcorn. He learned that Bushnell had patented his video circuit idea without including Dabney on the patent. Bushnell also had assigned Dabney a lower-level position in Atari and did not include him in high-level meetings. Around March 1973, Dabney left the company over this falling out, selling his portion of the company's ownership for . Dabney did continue to help Bushnell with starting his Pizza Time Theater (the predecessor of Chuck E. Cheese's) and Catalyst Technologies as an employee, being wary of Bushnell's previous treatment of him. Alongside these, he worked for several companies, including Raytheon and Fujitsu, and at other times working on his own projects for his own video game company Syzygy Game Company, where he made games that Bushnell used for his Pizza Time Theaters, including an arcade quiz game based on science fiction writer Isaac Asimov. Dabney also helped with the automated ticket number system used by the restaurants. When Pizza Time Theater went under, and Bushnell could not pay Dabney what he owed him, Dabney opted to close down Syzygy, and ended his friendship with Bushnell. Dabney went to work at Teledyne for about ten years before deciding to leave the industry.
After leaving the computer industry, Ted and Carolyn Dabney managed a grocery store and later a deli in Crescent Mills, California. Around 2006, they moved from California to a property he owned near Okanogan National Forest in Washington. The Dabneys later returned to California, taking up residence in Clearlake, a city north of San Francisco.
After his departure from Atari, Dabney did not receive much publicity, and until 2009, his contributions towards Atari and the early days of video games were generally forgotten. Dabney reappeared in 2009, following an announcement made by Paramount Pictures the previous year that they were going to make a biographical film based on Nolan Bushnell, but had never approached Dabney for any input. Dabney gave an interview with video game historian Leonard Herman in Edge that described his contributions towards Atari, and acknowledged that "I'm sure Bushnell had no desire to even acknowledge that I ever existed" and "He wouldn't give me any credit even while I was still there".
The Dabneys lost their Lake County home in the August 2016 Clayton Fire, relocating to nearby Clearlake. A GoFundMe account was set up to help the Dabneys resettle, but it was cancelled after Dabney confirmed that he didn't need it. Dabney was diagnosed with esophageal cancer in late 2017, and opted against treatment after being told he had eight months to live.
Dabney admitted he cut almost all ties to the video game industry and had minimal involvement with it in his later years. He said about the only involvement in it was when he'd watch his grandchildren play their games, and he'd tell them "Grandpa helped make these games, and they'd look at me like I'm crazy, because if I helped invent video games, why wasn't I more known like Walt Disney or Steve Jobs?" In March 2018, members of the Smithsonian Institution interviewed Dabney for an oral history from his point of view, which ran for eight hours at his home in California.
He died on May 26, 2018, in his Clearlake home from complications from the cancer.
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