Tech History Today

October 20, 1975: Atari launches its first cockpit cabinet game ‘Hi-Way’

Atari filed for a patent on the sit down ‘cockpit’ arcade cabinet game ‘Hi-Way’ on this day in 1975.

Hi-Way was a first-person driving game in which you had to dodge cars while driving. The game was marketed with the slogan “Hi Way — All It Needs Is Wheels”.

The game hardware was a pre-CPU discreet logic design and used the company’s Durastress technology.

October 20, 1906: Dr. Lee De Forest announces Triode

 

Dr. Lee De Forest announced his three-element electrical vacuum tube on this day in 1906. The tube later came to be known as ‘Triode’.

A triode is an electronic amplifying vacuum tube consisting of three electrodes inside an evacuated glass envelope: a heated filament or cathode, a grid, and a plate (anode).

Dr. Forest made the triode the first practical electronic amplifier by adding a grid electrode to the thermionic diode (Fleming valve). It is known as the ancestor of other types of vacuum tubes such as the tetrode and pentode.