title: Dixie Carter (wrestling)

text: Former TNA executive producer Eric Bischoff has praised and been critical of Carter stating "Dixie is, number one, a very intelligent woman... She really is... She’s incredibly savvy in terms of her ability to sell and to get buy-in... I’m talking about people at very high executive levels. She gained a lot of confidence from people within Viacom... You don’t do that if you’re an idiot. You don’t do that if you have zero talent... So, she was a very accomplished woman and a very intelligent woman... but Whereas with Dixie, I don’t think she had that vision and when she started I don’t think she really had a vision of where she wanted to be or how to get there... Even when TNA had been on Spike for a while, there was never a clear picture of the destination... It’s like getting in your car and saying, “Okay, grab the kids. Load up the car. Don’t forget the cat, ‘cause we’re going to… Where we going again? Oh, just load up the car and grab the cat, let’s go.” Well, great. Everybody’s in the car, you’re gassed up, you got some cold sandwiches in the back and off you go for a road trip. Until you get to the first intersection and it’s like, “Well, which way should I turn?” “Well, I dunno, where are we going? I’m not really sure. Let’s just keep going. Make a decision, take a turn and keep going.” That’s kind of what it felt like to me, at least".


title: Dixie Carter (wrestling)

text: Former TNA wrestler Shelly Martinez has been critical of Carter and stated in 2020 that "the more and more I tried to connect with Dixie, the more and more she would just reject me. She was rude to me a couple times".


title: Dixie Carter (wrestling)

text: Former TNA wrestler Booker T in a 2020 Hall of Fame podcast was also critical of Carter stating "I don’t know what Dixie was doing half the time... I don’t know how much writing she was doing for the show... being in that position and not knowing if she was in shark-infested waters or what type of sharks they were, she just didn’t know that. She didn’t know if it was a great white or one of the sand sharks. She didn’t know. That’s where the mistakes happen I think with TNA, her being one of those people who had a big heart...but I think she was trying to do a great thing... It just didn’t work out".


title: Dixie Carter (wrestling)

text: Former TNA wrestler Velvet Sky said that Carter "ruined it for all of us" in 2020 and, in 2021, described her as a "vile person" Sky also stated that Spike TV cancelled "Impact Wrestling" after they got tired "of Carter's shit". Angelina Love, Velvet Sky's tag team partner, said that working with her was "a disaster".


title: Dixie Carter (wrestling)

text: Former TNA wrestler Kurt Angle has praised Carter in a 2021 interview, where he stated "I thought she was a great boss, I had no problems with her. Sometimes, having a woman in charge is a lot better than a man, because they’re so much more understanding, more compassionate”.


title: William Bendix

text: William Bendix (January 14, 1906 – December 14, 1964) was an American film, radio, and television actor, who typically played rough, blue-collar characters. He is best remembered for his role in "Wake Island", which earned him an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor. He also portrayed the clumsily earnest aircraft plant worker Chester A. Riley in both the radio and television versions of "The Life of Riley", and baseball player Babe Ruth in "The Babe Ruth Story". Bendix was a frequent co-star of Alan Ladd, the two appearing in ten films together; both actors coincidentally died in 1964.


title: William Bendix

text: Bendix was born in Manhattan, the only child of Oscar and Hilda (Carnell) Bendix, and was named William after his German paternal grandfather. His uncle was composer, conductor, and violinist Max Bendix. In the early 1920s, Bendix was a batboy for the New York Yankees and said he saw Babe Ruth hit more than 100 home runs at Yankee Stadium. However, he was fired after fulfilling Ruth's request for a large order of hot dogs and soda before a game, which resulted in Ruth being unable to play that day. He worked as a grocer until the Great Depression.


title: William Bendix

text: Bendix began his acting career at age 30 in the New Jersey Federal Theatre Project. He made his film debut in 1942. He played in supporting roles in dozens of Hollywood films, usually as a warm-hearted gangster, detective or serviceman. He began with appearances in films noir, including a supporting role in "The Glass Key" (1942), which featured Brian Donlevy, Alan Ladd and Veronica Lake in the leads. He soon gained attention after appearing in Alfred Hitchcock's "Lifeboat" (1944) as Gus, a wounded and dying American sailor. He was the top-billed lead in "The Hairy Ape" (1944) based upon the Eugene O'Neill play, also starring Susan Hayward and Dorothy Comingore.


title: William Bendix

text: Bendix's other film roles include his portrayal of Babe Ruth in "The Babe Ruth Story" (1948) – a film roundly considered one of the worst sports biopics in film history and Sir Sagramore opposite Bing Crosby in "A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court" (1949), in which he took part in the trio, "Busy Doing Nothing". He played Nick the bartender in the film version of William Saroyan's "The Time of Your Life" (1948) starring James Cagney. Bendix had appeared in the stage version, but in the role of Officer Krupp (a role played on film by Broderick Crawford). He was cast in "The Blue Dahlia" (1946), appearing for the second time alongside Ladd and Lake. He also starred in a film adaptation of his radio program "The Life of Riley" (1949).


title: William Bendix

text: Bendix's appearance in the Hal Roach-produced film "The McGuerins from Brooklyn" (1942), playing a rugged blue-collar man, led to his best-remembered role. Producer and creator Irving Brecher saw Bendix as the perfect personification of Chester A. Riley, giving a second chance to a show whose audition failed when the sponsor spurned Groucho Marx for the lead. With Bendix stumbling, bumbling, and skating almost perpetually on thin ice, stretching the patience of his otherwise loving wife and children, "The Life of Riley" was a radio hit from 1944 through 1951, and Bendix brought an adaptation of the film version to "Lux Radio Theatre".


title: William Bendix

text: The show began as a proposed Groucho Marx radio series, "The Flotsam Family", but the sponsor balked at what would have been essentially a straight head-of-household role for the comedian. Then creator and producer Irving Brecher saw Bendix as taxicab company owner Tim McGuerin in "The McGuerins from Brooklyn". Brecher stated, "He was a Brooklyn guy and there was something about him. I thought, This guy could play it. He'd made a few films, like "Lifeboat", but he was not a name. So I took "The Flotsam Family" script, revised it, made it a Brooklyn Family, took out the flippancies and made it more meat-and-potatoes, and thought of a new title, "The Life of Riley". Bendix's delivery and the spin he put on his lines made it work." The reworked script cast Bendix as blundering Chester A. Riley, a wing riveter at the fictional Cunningham Aircraft plant in California. His frequent exclamation of indignation"What a revoltin' development this is!"became one of the catchphrases of the 1940s. It was later reused by Benjamin J. Grimm of the Fantastic Four.


title: William Bendix

text: Bendix was not able to play the role on television because of a contracted film commitment. The part instead went to Jackie Gleason and aired a single season beginning in October 1949. Despite winning an Emmy award, the show was cancelled, in part because Gleason was less acceptable as Riley, since Bendix had been so identified with the part on radio. In 1953, Bendix became available for a new television version, and this time the show was a hit. The second television version of "The Life of Riley" ran from 1953 to 1958, long enough for Riley to become a grandfather.


title: William Bendix

text: On the 1952 television program "This Is Your Life", hosted by Ralph Edwards, Bendix was claimed to be a descendant of the 19th-century composer Felix Mendelssohn.


title: William Bendix

text: Bendix played the lead in Rod Serling's "The Time Element" (1958), a time-travel adventure episode about a man who travels back to 1941 and unsuccessfully tries to warn everyone in Honolulu about the impending attack on Pearl Harbor; the program's success opened the doors for Serling's later series "The Twilight Zone". Bendix also appeared on "The Ford Show, Starring Tennessee Ernie Ford" (also 1958). He returned for a second appearance on October 1, 1959, the fourth-season premiere of the series, in which he and Tennessee Ernie performed a comedy skit about a safari.


title: William Bendix

text: In NBC's "Wagon Train" ("Around the Horn", 1958), Bendix played the captain of a sailing cargo ship who shanghaied Major Adams (Ward Bond), Bill Hawks (Terry Wilson) and Charlie Wooster (Frank McGrath), forcing them to work on his ship. On November 16, 1959, Bendix appeared on NBC's color broadcast of "The Steve Allen Plymouth Show" with Jack Kerouac. A color videotape of the broadcast survives. Bendix starred in all 17 episodes of the NBC western series "Overland Trail" (1960) in the role of Frederick Thomas "Fred" Kelly, the crusty superintendent of the Overland Stage Company. Doug McClure, later Trampas on "The Virginian," co-starred as his young understudy, Frank "Flip" Flippen. He guest-starred in an episode of "Mister Ed" ("Pine Lake Lodge", 1961) which served as a back door pilot for a proposed sitcom that was not picked up.


title: William Bendix

text: In the fall of 1964, an American situation comedy starring Bendix and Martha Raye was scheduled to air on CBS, but due to Bendix's shaky health, the network decided not to air the program. This action resulted in a lawsuit from Bendix for $2.658 million in May, with the actor stating that the decision hurt his career and that he was in excellent health and could perform all of the requirements of the agreement. The case was settled out of court. Bendix died on December 14, 1964, of complications from pneumonia.


title: William Bendix

text: Bendix saw advantages to both film and stage work. "“Films take tremendous pressure offyou can always reshoot a scene. But on the stage you can work with a part, build it from performance to performance.”


title: William Bendix

text: As a professional, he was pragmatic and unsentimental about his career. His credo, he remarked, was, “Save a buck or two and keep on actingthat's me.” In an interview in 1960 he summed up his life: “I've had a long, – varied, pleasant, eventful career. I don't hate anybody and I don't have any bitter thoughts. I started out without any advantages, but I've been lucky and successful and I've had fun.”


title: William Bendix

text: Bendix married a childhood friend, Theresa Stefanotti, on October 22, 1927. They remained married until his death 37 years later in 1964. The couple had a daughter, Lorraine, and adopted another, Stephanie.


title: William Bendix

text: Bendix died in Los Angeles at age 58 in 1964 as the result of a chronic stomach ailment that brought on malnutrition and ultimately lobar pneumonia. He was interred at the San Fernando Mission Cemetery in Mission Hills, Los Angeles.


title: William Bendix

text: Bendix was a Republican. During the 1944 presidential election campaign, he attended a massive rally organized by David O. Selznick in the Los Angeles Coliseum in support of the Dewey-Bricker ticket as well as Governor Earl Warren of California.


title: Computer scientist

text: Computer scientists typically work on the theoretical side of computation, as opposed to the hardware side on which computer engineers mainly focus (although there is overlap). Although computer scientists can also focus their work and research on specific areas (such as algorithm and data structure development and design, software engineering, information theory, database theory, computational complexity theory, numerical analysis, programming language theory, computer graphics, and computer vision), their foundation is the theoretical study of computing from which these other fields derive.


title: Computer scientist

text: A primary goal of computer scientists is to develop or validate models, often mathematical, to describe the properties of computational systems (processors, programs, computers interacting with people, computers interacting with other computers, etc.) with an overall objective of discovering designs that yield useful benefits (faster, smaller, cheaper, more precise, etc.).


title: Computer scientist

text: Most computer scientists are required to possess a PhD, M.S., or B.S. in computer science, or other similar fields like Information and Computer Science (CIS), or a closely related discipline such as mathematics or physics.


title: Computer scientist

text: Computer scientists are often hired by software publishing firms, scientific research and development organizations where they develop the theories that allow new technologies to be developed. Computer scientists are also employed by educational institutions such as universities.


title: Computer scientist

text: Computer scientists can follow more practical applications of their knowledge, doing things such as software engineering. They can also be found in the field of information technology consulting, and may be seen as a type of mathematician, given how much of the field depends on mathematics. Computer scientists employed in industry may eventually advance into managerial or project leadership positions.


title: Computer scientist

text: Employment prospects for computer scientists are said to be excellent. Such prospects seem to be attributed, in part, to very rapid growth in computer systems design and related services industry, and the software publishing industry, which are projected to be among the fastest growing industries in the U.S. economy.


title: Prince Edward Islands

text: The Prince Edward Islands are two small uninhabited islands in the sub-Antarctic Indian Ocean that are part of South Africa. The islands are named Marion Island (named after Marc-Joseph Marion du Fresne, 1724–1772) and Prince Edward Island (named after Prince Edward, Duke of Kent and Strathearn, 1767–1820).


title: Prince Edward Islands

text: The islands in the group have been declared Special Nature Reserves under the South African Environmental Management: Protected Areas Act, No. 57 of 2003, and activities on the islands are therefore restricted to research and conservation management. Further protection was granted when the area was declared a marine protected area in 2013. The only human inhabitants of the islands are the staff of a meteorological and biological research station run by the South African National Antarctic Programme on Marion Island.


title: Prince Edward Islands

text: The islands were discovered on 4 March 1663 by Barent Barentszoon Lam of the Dutch East India Company ship "Maerseveen" and were named "Dina" (Prince Edward) and "Maerseveen" (Marion), but the islands were erroneously recorded to be at 41° South, and neither were found again by subsequent Dutch sailors. In January 1772, the French frigate "Le Mascarin", captained by Marc-Joseph Marion du Fresne, visited the islands and spent five days trying to land, thinking they had found Antarctica (then not yet proven to exist). Marion named the islands "Terre de l'Espérance" (Marion) and "Ile de la Caverne" (Pr. Edward). After failing to land, "Le Mascarin" continued eastward, discovering the Crozet Islands and landing at New Zealand, where Marion du Fresne and some of his crew were killed and eaten by Māori natives. Julien Crozet, navigator and second in command of "Le Mascarin", survived the disaster, and happened to meet James Cook at Cape Town in 1776, at the onset of Cook's third voyage. Crozet shared the charts of his ill-fated expedition, and as Cook sailed from Cape Town, he passed the islands on 13 December, but was unable to attempt a landing due to bad weather. Cook named the islands after Prince Edward, the fourth son of King George III; and though he is also often credited with naming the larger island Marion, after Captain Marion, this name was adopted by sealers and whalers who later hunted the area, to distinguish the two islands.


title: Prince Edward Islands

text: The first recorded landing on the islands was in 1799 by a group of French seal hunters of the "Sally". Another landing in late 1803 by a group of seal hunters led by American captain Henry Fanning of the "Catharine" found signs of earlier human occupation. The islands were frequented by sealers until about 1810, when the local fur seal populations had been nearly eradicated. The first scientific expedition to the islands was led by James Clark Ross, who visited in 1840 during his exploration of the Antarctic, but was unable to land. Ross sailed along the islands on 21 April 1840. He made observations on vast numbers of penguins ("groups of many thousands each"), and other kinds of sea-birds. He also saw fur seals, which he supposed to be of the species "Arctocephalus falklandicus". The islands were finally surveyed during the "Challenger" Expedition, led by Captain George Nares, in 1873.


title: Prince Edward Islands

text: The sealing era lasted from 1799 to 1913. During that period visits by 103 vessels are recorded, seven of which ended in shipwreck. Sealing relics include iron trypots, the ruins of huts and inscriptions. The occasional modern sealing vessel visited from Cape Town, South Africa, in the 1920s.


title: Prince Edward Islands

text: The islands have been the location of other shipwrecks. In June 1849 the brig "Richard Dart", with a troop of Royal Engineers under Lt. James Liddell, was wrecked on Prince Edward Island; only 10 of the 63 on board survived to be rescued by elephant seal hunters from Cape Town. In 1908 the Norwegian vessel "Solglimt" was shipwrecked on Marion Island, and survivors established a short-lived village at the north coast, before being rescued. The wreck of the "Solglimt" is the best-known in the islands, and is accessible to divers.


title: Prince Edward Islands

text: On 22 September 1979, a US surveillance satellite known as Vela 6911 noted an unidentified double flash of light, known as the Vela incident, in the waters off the islands. There was and continues to be considerable controversy over whether this event was perhaps an undeclared nuclear test carried out by South Africa and Israel or some other event. The cause of the flash remains officially unknown, and some information about the event remains classified. Today, most independent researchers believe that the 1979 flash was caused by a nuclear explosion.


title: Prince Edward Islands

text: In 2003, the South African government declared the Prince Edward Islands a Special Nature Reserve, and in 2013 declared of ocean waters around the islands a Marine Protection Area, thus creating one of the world's largest environmental protection areas.


title: Prince Edward Islands

text: In 1908, the British government assumed ownership of the islands. In late 1947 and early 1948, South Africa, with Britain's agreement, annexed the islands and installed the meteorological station on Transvaal Cove on the north-east coast of Marion Island. The research station was soon enlarged and today studies regional meteorology and the biology of the islands, in particular the birds (penguins, petrels, albatrosses, gulls) and seals.


title: Prince Edward Islands

text: A new research base was built from 2001 to 2011 to replace older buildings on the site. The access to the station is either by boat or helicopter. A helipad and storage hangar is located behind the main base structure.


title: Prince Edward Islands

text: In April 2017, the South African National Antarctic Programme launched a new astrophysical experiment on Marion Island called Probing Radio Intensity at high-Z from Marion (PRIZM), searching for signatures of the hydrogen line in the early universe.


title: Prince Edward Islands

text: The island group is about south-east of Port Elizabeth in mainland South Africa. At 46 degrees latitude, its distance to the equator is only slightly longer than to the South Pole. Marion Island (), the larger of the two, is long and wide with an area of and a coastline of some , most of which is high cliffs. The highest point on Marion Island is Mascarin Peak (formerly State President Swart Peak), reaching above sea level. The topography of Marion Island includes many hillocks and small lakes, and boggy lowland terrain with little vegetation.


title: Prince Edward Islands

text: Prince Edward Island () is much smaller—only about , long and wide—and lies some to the north-east of Marion Island. The terrain is generally rocky, with high cliffs () on its south western side. At the van Zinderen Bakker Peak north-west of the center, it reaches a height of .


title: Prince Edward Islands

text: There are a few offshore rocks along the northern coast of Prince Edward Island, like Ship Rock north of northernmost point, and Ross Rocks from the shore. Boot Rock is about off the northern coast of Marion Island.


title: Prince Edward Islands

text: Both islands are of volcanic origin. Marion Island is one of the peaks of a large underwater shield volcano that rises some from the sea floor to the top of Mascarin Peak. The volcano is active, with eruptions having occurred between 1980 and 2004.


title: Prince Edward Islands

text: Despite being located inside the south temperate zone at 46 degrees latitude, the islands have a tundra climate. They lie directly in the path of eastward-moving depressions all year round and this gives them an unusually cool and windy climate. Strong regional winds, known as the roaring forties, blow almost every day of the year, and the prevailing wind direction is north-westerly. Annual rainfall averages from up to over on Mascarin Peak. In spite of its very chilly climate it is located closer to the equator than mild northern hemisphere climates such as Paris and Seattle and only one degree farther south than fellow southern hemisphere climates such as Comodoro Rivadavia in Argentina and Alexandra in New Zealand. Many climates on lower latitudes in the Northern hemisphere have far colder winters than Prince Edward Islands due to the islands' maritime moderation, even though temperatures in summer are much cooler than those normally found in maritime climates.


title: Prince Edward Islands

text: The islands are among the cloudiest places in the world; about 1300 hours a year of sunshine occur on the sheltered eastern side of Marion Island, but only around 800 hours occur away from the coast on the wet western sides of Marion and Prince Edward Islands.


title: Prince Edward Islands

text: Summer and winter have fairly similar climates with cold winds and threat of snow or frost at any time of the year. However, the mean temperature in February (midsummer) is and in August (midwinter) it is .


title: Prince Edward Islands

text: The islands are part of the Southern Indian Ocean Islands tundra ecoregion that includes a small number of subantarctic islands. Because of the paucity of land masses in the Southern Ocean, the islands host a wide variety of species and are critical to conservation. In the cold subantarctic climate, plants are mainly limited to grasses, mosses, and kelp, while lichens are the most visible fungi. The main indigenous animals are insects along with large populations of seabirds, seals and penguins.


title: Prince Edward Islands

text: The islands have been designated an Important Bird Area (IBA) by BirdLife International for their significant seabird breeding populations. At least thirty different species of birds are thought to breed on the islands, and it is estimated the islands support upwards of 5 million breeding seabirds, and 8 million seabirds total. Five species of albatross (of which all are either threatened or endangered) are known to breed on the islands, including the wandering albatross, dark-mantled, light-mantled, Indian yellow-nosed and grey-headed albatross. The islands also host fourteen species of petrel, four species of prion, the Antarctic tern, and the brown skua, among others seabirds. Four penguin species are found: king penguins, Eastern rockhoppers, gentoos and macaroni penguins.


title: Prince Edward Islands

text: Three species of seal breed on the islands: the southern elephant seal, the Antarctic fur seal, and the Subantarctic fur seal. The waters surrounding the islands are often frequented by several species of whale, especially orcas, which prey on penguins and seals. Large whales such as southern rights and southern humpbacks, and leopard seals are seen more sporadically, and it remains unclear how large or stable their current local populations are, though it is thought their numbers are significantly down compared to the time of first human contact with the islands. The area saw heavy sealing and whaling operations in the nineteenth century and continued to be subject to mass illegal whaling until the 1970s, with the Soviet Union and Japan allegedly continuing whaling operations into the 1990s. Currently, the greatest ecological threat is the longline fishing of Patagonian toothfish, which endangers a number of seabirds that dive into the water after baited hooks.


title: Prince Edward Islands

text: The wildlife is particularly vulnerable to introduced species and the historical problem has been with cats and mice. House mice arrived to Marion Island with whaling and sealing ships in the 1800s and quickly multiplied, so much so that in 1949, five domestic cats were brought to the research base to deal with them. The cats multiplied quickly, and by 1977 there were approximately 3,400 cats on the island, feeding on burrowing petrels in addition to mice, and taking an estimated 455,000 petrels a year. Some species of petrels soon disappeared from Marion Island, and a cat eradication programme was established. A few cats were intentionally infected with the highly specific feline panleukopenia virus, which reduced the cat population to about 600 by 1982. The remaining cats were killed by nocturnal shooting, and in 1991 only eight cats were trapped in a 12-month period.


title: Prince Edward Islands

text: It is believed that no cats remain on Marion Island today, and with the cats gone, the mouse population has sharply increased to "plague like" levels. In 2003, ornithologists discovered that in the absence of other food sources, the mice were attacking albatross chicks and eating them alive as they sat helplessly on their nests. A similar problem has been observed on Gough Island, where a mouse eradication programme is currently planned to begin in 2019, with the island expected to be mouse free by 2021. A programme to eradicate invasive rats on South Georgia Island was completed in 2015, and as of 2016 the island appears to be completely rat free. The geography of Marion Island presents certain obstacles not found on either Gough or South Georgia islands, particularly its large size, high elevations and variable weather. An assessment of the island was completed in May 2015, led by noted invasive species ecologist John Parkes, with the general conclusion that an eradication programme is feasible, but will require precise planning.


title: Prince Edward Islands

text: Both Gough Island and the Prince Edward Islands also suffer from invasive procumbent pearlwort ("Sagina procumbens"), which is transforming the upland ecosystem and is now considered beyond control.


title: Prince Edward Islands

text: Marion Island and Prince Edward Island were claimed for South Africa on 29 December 1947 and 4 January 1948 respectively, by a South African Navy force from HMSAS "Transvaal" under the command of John Fairbairn. On 1 October 1948 the annexation was made official when Governor-General Gideon Brand van Zyl signed the Prince Edward Islands Act, 1948. In terms of the Act, the islands fall under the jurisdiction of the Cape Town Magistrate's Court, and South African law as applied in the Western Cape applies on them. The islands are also deemed to be situated within the electoral district containing the Port of Cape Town; this is ward 115 of the City of Cape Town.


title: Prince Edward Islands

text: , Marion Island, prefix ZS8, was the third most wanted DXCC "entity" by the amateur radio community. By the end of 2014, it had dropped to 27th, after simultaneous activity by three licencees in the 2013/2014 team. However, their activity was mainly on voice. On Morse telegraphy, the Islands remain the second most wanted entity after North Korea, while on data they are sixth out of 340.


title: Atari, Inc.

text: Atari, Inc. was an American video game developer and home computer company founded in 1972 by Nolan Bushnell and Ted Dabney. Atari was a key player in the formation of the video arcade and video game industry.


title: Atari, Inc.

text: Based primarily around the Sunnyvale, California, area in the center of Silicon Valley, the company was initially formed to develop arcade games, launching with "Pong" in 1972. As computer technology matured with low-cost integrated circuits, Atari ventured into the consumer market, first with dedicated home versions of "Pong" and other arcade successes around 1975, and into programmable consoles using game cartridges with the Atari Video Computer System (Atari VCS or later branded as the Atari 2600) in 1977. To bring the Atari VCS to market, Bushnell sold Atari to Warner Communications in 1976. In 1978, Warner brought in Ray Kassar to help run the company, but over the next few years, gave Kassar more of a leadership role in the company. Bushnell was fired in 1978, with Kassar named CEO in 1979.


title: Atari, Inc.

text: From 1978 through 1982, Atari continued to expand at a great pace and was the leading company in the growing video game industry. Its arcade games such as "Asteroids" helped to usher in a golden age of arcade games from 1979 to 1983, while the arcade conversion of Taito's "Space Invaders" for the VCS became the console's system seller and killer application. Atari's success brought new console manufacturers to the market including Mattel Electronics and Coleco, as well as the creation of third-party developers such as Activision and Imagic.


title: Atari, Inc.

text: Facing new competition heading into 1982, Atari made a number of poor decisions to try to maintain their leadership position. These decisions resulted in overproduction of units and games that did not meet sales expectations and eroded consumer confidence in Atari. Atari had also ventured into the home computer market with their first 8-bit computers, but their products did not fare as well as their competitors'. The once-profitable Atari began a string of quarters of losses throughout 1983, with the company losing more than over 1983. Kassar resigned as CEO in mid-1983 amid mounting losses and was replaced by James J. Morgan who instituted a number of cost-cutting procedures to turn Atari around, including a large number of layoffs. However, Atari's financial hardships had already reverberated through the industry, leading to the 1983 video game crash that devastated the video game market in the United States.


title: Atari, Inc.

text: Warner Communications sold the home console and computer division of Atari to Jack Tramiel in July 1984, who then renamed his company Atari Corporation. Atari, Inc. was renamed Atari Games, Inc. after the sale. In 1985, Warner formed a new corporation jointly with Namco, AT Games, Inc., which acquired the coin-operated assets of Atari Games, Inc. AT Games was subsequently renamed Atari Games Corporation. Atari Games, Inc. was then renamed Atari Holdings, Inc. and remained a non-operating subsidiary of Warner Communications and its successor, Time Warner, before being merged back into the parent company in 1992.


title: Atari, Inc.

text: While studying at the University of Utah, electrical engineering student Nolan Bushnell had a part-time job at an amusement arcade, where he became familiar with arcade electro-mechanical games such as Chicago Coin's racing game "Speedway" (1969). He watched customers play and helped maintain the machinery, while learning how it worked and developing his understanding of how the game business operates.


title: Atari, Inc.

text: In 1968, Bushnell graduated, became an employee of Ampex in San Francisco and worked alongside Ted Dabney.The two found they had shared interests and became friends. Bushnell shared with Dabney his gaming-pizza parlor idea, and had taken him to the computer lab at Stanford Artificial Intelligence Laboratory to see the games on those systems. They jointly developed the concept of using a standalone computer system with a monitor and attaching a coin slot to it to play games on.


title: Atari, Inc.

text: To create the game, Bushnell and Dabney decided to start a partnership called Syzygy Engineering, each putting in of their own funds to support it. They had also asked fellow Ampex employee Larry Bryan to participate, and while he had been on board with their ideas, he backed out when asked to contribute financially to starting the company.


title: Atari, Inc.

text: Bushnell and Dabney worked with Nutting Associates to manufacture their product. Dabney developed a method of using video circuitry components to mimic functions of a computer for a much cheaper cost and a smaller space. Bushnell and Dabney used this to develop a variation on "Spacewar!" called "Computer Space" where the player shot at two UFOs. Nutting manufactured the game. While they were developing this, they joined Nutting as engineers, but they also made sure that Nutting placed a "Syzygy Engineered" label on the control panel of each "Computer Space" game sold to reflect their work in the game. "Computer Space" did not fare well commercially when it was placed in Nutting's customary market: bars. Feeling that the game was simply too complex for the average customer unfamiliar and unsure with the new technology, Bushnell started looking for new ideas. About 1,500 "Computer Space" cabinets were made, but were a difficult product to sell. While Bushnell blamed Nutting for its poor marketing, he later recognized that "Computer Space" was too complex of a game as players had to read the instructions on the cabinet before they could play. Bushnell said: "To be successful, I had to come up with a game people already knew how to play; something so simple that any drunk at any bar could play."


title: Atari, Inc.

text: Bushnell began seeking other partners outside of Nutting, and approached pinball game manufacturer Bally Manufacturing, who indicated interest in funding future efforts in arcade games by Bushnell and Dabney if Nutting was not involved. The two quit Nutting and established offices for Syzygy in Santa Clara; at that point not taking a salary yet since they had no products. Bally then offered them a a month for six months to design a new video game and a new pinball machine. With those funds, they hired Al Alcorn, a former co-worker at Ampex, as their first design engineer. Bushnell had originally planned to develop a driving video game, influenced by Chicago Coin's "Speedway" which at the time was the biggest-selling electro-mechanical game at his arcade. Initially wanting to start Syzygy off with a driving game, Bushnell had concerns that it might be too complicated for Alcorn's first game.


title: Atari, Inc.

text: In May 1972, Bushnell had seen a demonstration of the Magnavox Odyssey, which included a tennis game. According to Alcorn, Bushnell decided to have him produce an arcade version of the Odyssey's Tennis game, which would go on to be named "Pong". Bushnell had Alcorn use Dabney's video circuit concepts to help develop the game, believing it would be a first prototype, but Alcorn's success impressed both Bushnell and Dabney, leading them to believe they had a major success on hand and prepared to offer the game to Bally as part of the contract.


title: Atari, Inc.

text: Meanwhile, Bushnell and Dabney had gone to incorporate the firm, but found that Syzygy (an astronomical term) already existed in California. Bushnell enjoyed the strategy board game "Go", and in considering various terms from the game, they chose to name the company "atari", a Japanese term that in the context of the game means a state where a stone or group of stones is imminently in danger of being taken by one's opponent (equivalent to the concept of check in chess). Other terms Bushnell had offer included "sente" (when a Go player has the initiative; Bushnell would use this term years later to name another company of his) and "hane" (a "Go" move to go around an opponent's pieces). Atari was incorporated in the state of California on June 27, 1972.


title: Atari, Inc.

text: Bushnell and Dabney offered to license "Pong" to both Bally and its Midway subsidiary, but both companies rejected it because it required two players. Instead, Bushnell and Dabney opted to create a test unit themselves and see how it was received at a local establishment. By August 1972, the first "Pong" was completed. It consisted of a black and white television from Walgreens, the special game hardware, and a coin mechanism from a laundromat on the side which featured a milk carton inside to catch coins. It was placed in a Sunnyvale tavern by the name of Andy Capp's to test its viability. The Andy Capp test was extremely successful, so the company created twelve more test units, ten which were distributed across other local bars. They found that the machines were averaging around a week each; in several cases, when bar owners reported that the machines were malfunctioning, Alcorn found that it was due to the coin collector had been overflowing with quarters, shorting out the coin slot mechanism. They reported these numbers to Bally, who still had not decided on taking the license. Bushnell and Dabney realized that they needed to expand on the game but formally needed to get out of their contract with Bally. Bushnell told Bally that they could offer to make another game for them, but only if they rejected "Pong"; Bally agreed, letting Atari off the hook for the pinball machine design as well.


title: Atari, Inc.

text: After talks to release "Pong" through Nutting and several other companies broke down, Bushnell and Dabney decided to release Pong on their own, and Atari, Inc. transformed into a coin-op design and production company. Using investments and funds from a coin-operated machine route, they leased a former concert hall and roller rink in Santa Clara to produce "Pong" cabinets on their own with hired help for the production line. Bushnell had also set up arrangements with local coin-op-game distributors to help move units. Atari shipped their first commercial "Pong" unit in November 1972. Over 2,500 "Pong" cabinets were made in 1973, and by the end of its production in 1974, Atari had made over 8,000 "Pong" cabinets.


title: Atari, Inc.

text: Atari could not produce "Pong" cabinets fast enough to meet the new demand, leading to a number of existing companies in the electro-mechanical games industry and new ventures to produce their own versions of "Pong". Ralph H. Baer, who had patented the concepts behind the Odyssey through his employer Sanders Associates, felt "Pong" and these other games infringed on his ideas. Magnavox filed suit against Atari and others in April 1974 for patent infringement. Under legal counsel's advice, Bushnell opted to have Atari settle out of court with Magnavox by June 1976, agreeing to pay in eight installments for a perpetual license for Baer's patents and to share technical information and grant a license to use the technology found in all current Atari products and any new products announced between June 1, 1976, and June 1, 1977.


title: Atari, Inc.

text: Around 1973, Bushnell began to expand out the company, moving their corporate headquarters to Los Gatos. Bushnell contracted graphic design artist George Opperman, who ran his own design firm, to create a logo for Atari. Opperman has stated that the logo that was selected was based on the letter "A" but considering Atari's success with "Pong", created the logo to fit the "A" shape, with two players on opposite sides of a center line. However, some within Atari at this time dispute this, stating that Opperman had provided several different possible designs and this was the one selected by Bushnell and others. The logo first appeared on Atari's arcade game "Space Race" in 1973, and had become known as the "Fuji" due to its resemblance to Mount Fuji. Opperman was later hired directly into Atari to establish the company's own art and design division in 1976.


title: Atari, Inc.

text: From late 1972 to early 1973, a rift in the business relationship between Bushnell and Dabney began to develop, with Dabney feeling he was being pushed to the side by Bushnell while Bushnell saw Dabney as a potential roadblock to his larger plans for Atari. By March 1973, Dabney formally left Atari, selling his portion of the company for . While Dabney would continue to work for Bushnell on other ventures, including Pizza Time Theaters, he had a falling out with Bushnell and ultimately left the video game industry.


title: Atari, Inc.

text: In mid-1973, Atari acquired Cyan Engineering, a computer engineering firm founded by Steve Mayer and Larry Emmons, following a consulting contract with Atari. Bushnell established Atari's internal Grass Valley Think Tank at Cyan to promote research & development of new games and products.


title: Atari, Inc.

text: Atari secretly spawned a "competitor" called Kee Games in September 1973, headed by Bushnell's next door neighbor Joe Keenan, to circumvent pinball distributors' insistence on exclusive distribution deals; both Atari and Kee could market (virtually) the same game to different distributors, with each getting an "exclusive" deal. Kee was further led by Atari employees: Steve Bristow, a developer that worked under Alcorn on arcade games, Bill White, and Gil Williams. While early Kee games were near-copies of Atari's own games, Kee began developing their own titles such as that drew distributor interest to Kee and effectively helping Bushnell to realize the disruption of the exclusive distribution deals.


title: Atari, Inc.

text: In 1974, Atari began to see financial struggles and Bushnell was forced to lay off half the staff. Atari was facing increased competition from new arcade game producers, many which made clones of "Pong" and other Atari games. An accounting mistake caused them to lose money on the release of "Gran Trak 10". Among other international distribution partnerships being established by Ron Gordon, their vice president of international marketing, Atari also tried to open a division in Japan as Atari Japan to sell their games through, but the venture had several roadblocks. In a 2018 interview Alcorn described the situation as "an utter disaster beyond recognition". Bushnell said "We didn't realize that Japan was a closed market, and so we were in violation of all kinds of rules and regulations of the Japanese, and they were starting to give us a real bad time." Gordon "fixed all that for us for a huge commission" according to Bushnell. Atari sold Atari Japan to Namco for , though which Namco would be the exclusive distributor of Atari's games in Japan. Bushnell has claimed that deals arranged by Gordon saved Atari. Gordon further suggested that Atari merge Kee Games into Atari in September 1974, just ahead of the release of "Tank" in November 1974. "Tank" was a success in the arcade, and Atari was able to reestablish its financial stability by the end of the year. In the merger, Joe Keenan was kept on as president of Atari while Bushnell stayed at CEO.


title: Atari, Inc.

text: Having avoided bankruptcy, Atari continued to expand on its arcade game offerings in 1975. The additional financial stability also allowed Atari to pursue new product ideas. One of these was the idea of a home version of "Pong", a concept they had first considered as early as 1973. The cost of integrated circuits to support a home version had fallen enough to be suitable for a home console by 1974, and initial design work on console began in earnest in late 1974 by Alcorn, Harold Lee and Bob Brown. Atari struggled to find a distributor for the console but eventually arranged a deal with Sears to make 150,000 units by the end of 1975 for the holiday season. Atari was able to meet Sears' order with additional investments during 1975. The home "Pong" console (branded as Sears Tele-Game) was high-demand product that season, and established Atari with a viable home console division in addition to their arcade division. By 1976, Atari began releasing home "Pong" consoles, including "Pong" variants, under their own brand name. The success of home "Pong" drew a similar range of competitors to this market, including Coleco with their Telstar series of consoles.


title: Atari, Inc.

text: In 1975, Bushnell started an effort to produce a flexible video game console that was capable of playing all four of Atari's then-current games. Bushnell was concerned that arcade games took about to develop and had about a 10% chance of being successful. Similarly, dedicated home consoles had cost about to design but with increased competition, had a limited practical shelf-life of a few months. Instead, a programmable console with swappable games would be far more lucrative. Development took place at Cyan Engineering, which initially had serious difficulties trying to produce such a machine. However, in early 1976, MOS Technology released the first inexpensive microprocessor, the 6502, which had sufficient performance for Atari's needs. Atari hired Joe Decuir and Jay Miner to develop the hardware and custom Television Interface Adaptor for this new console. Their project, under the codename of "Stella", would become the Atari Video Computer System (Atari VCS).


title: Atari, Inc.

text: Atari, as a private company under Bushnell, gained a reputation for relaxed employee policies in areas such as formal hours and dress codes, and company-sponsored recreational activities involving alcohol, marijuana, and hot tubs. Board and management meetings to discuss new ideas moved from formal events at hotel meeting rooms to more casual gatherings at Bushnell's home, Cyan Engineering, and a coastal resort in Pajaro Dunes. Dress codes were considered atypical for a professional setting, with most working in jeans and tee shirts. Many of the workers hired early on to construct games were hippies who knew enough to help to solder components together and took minimal wages. Several former employees, speaking in years that followed, described this as the common culture of the 1970s and not unique to Atari.


title: Atari, Inc.

text: This approach changed in 1978 after Ray Kassar was brought on from Warner initially to help with marketing but eventually took on a larger role in the company, displacing Bushnell and Keenan, and instituting more formal employee policies for the company.


title: Atari, Inc.

text: Ahead of entering the home console market, Atari recognized they needed additional capital to support this market, and though they had acquired smaller investments through 1975, they needed a larger infusion of funds. Bushnell had considered going public, then tried to sell the company to MCA and Disney but they passed. Instead, after at least six months of negotiations in 1976, Atari took an acquisition offer from Warner Communications for that was completed in November 1976, of which Bushnell received . Bushnell was kept as chairman and CEO while Keenan was retained as president. For Warner, the deal represented an opportunity to buoy their underperforming film and music business divisions. Along with Warner's purchase, Atari had established its new headquarters in the Moffett Park area in Sunnyvale, California.


title: Atari, Inc.

text: During Atari's negotiations with Warner, Fairchild Camera and Instrument announced the Fairchild Channel F for release in November 1976. The Channel F was the first programmable home console that used cartridges to play different games. Following Warner's acquisition, they provided into Stella's development, allowing Atari to complete the console by early 1977. Its announcement on June 4, 1977, may have been delayed until after June 1, 1977, to wait out the terms of the Magnavox settlement from the earlier "Pong" patent lawsuit so they would not have to disclose information on it. The Atari VCS was released in September 1977. Most of the launch titles for the console were games based on Atari's success arcade games, such as "Combat" that incorporated elements of both "Tank" and "Jet Fighter". The company made around 400,000 Atari VCS units for the 1977 holiday season, most which were sold but the company had lost around due to production problems that caused some units to be delivered late to retailers.


title: Atari, Inc.

text: In addition to the VCS, Atari continued to manufacture dedicated home console units through 1977 though discontinued these by 1978 and destroyed their unsold stock. Another one-off device from the consumer products division released in 1977 was Atari Video Music, a computerized device that took in audio input and created graphics displays to a monitor. The unit did not sell well and was discontinued in 1978.


title: Atari, Inc.

text: Atari continued its arcade game line as it built up its consumer division. "Breakout" in 1976 was one of Atari's last games based on transistor–transistor logic (TTL) discrete logic design before the company transitioned to microprocessors. It was engineered by Steve Wozniak based on Bushnell's concept of a single-player "Pong", and using as few TTL chips as possible from an informal challenge given to Wozniak by fellow Atari employee Steve Jobs. "Breakout" was successful, selling around 11,000 units, and Atari still struggled to meet demand. Atari exported a limited number of units to Namco via its prior Atari Japan venture, and led Namco to create its own clone of the game to meet demand in Japan, and helped to establish Namco as a major company in the Japanese video game industry. Subsequently, Atari moved to microprocessors for its arcade games such as "Cops ‘N Robbers", "Sprint 2", "Tank 8", and "Night Driver".


title: Atari, Inc.

text: Alongside continuing work in arcade game development and their preparations to launch the Atari VCS, Atari launched two more products in 1977. The first was their Atari Pinball division, which included Steve Ritchie and Eugene Jarvis. Around 1976, Atari had been concerned that arcade operators were getting nervous on the prospects of future arcade games, and thus launched their own pinball machines to accompany their arcade games. Atari's pinball machines were built following the technology principles they had learned from arcade and home console games, using solid-state electronics over electro-mechanical components to make them easier to design and repair. The division released about ten different pinball units between 1977 and 1979. Many of the machines were considered to be innovative for their time but were difficult to produce and meet distributors' demand. The second new venture in 1977 was the first of the Pizza Time Theatre (later known as Chuck E. Cheese), based on the pizza arcade concept that Bushnell had from the start. At this stage, the concept also allowed Atari to bypass problems with getting their arcade games placed into arcades by effectively controlling the arcade itself, while also creating a family-friendly environment. The first restaurant/arcade launched in San Jose, California in May 1977.


title: Atari, Inc.

text: Atari hired in more programmers after releasing the VCS to start a second wave of games for release in 1978. In contrast to the launch titles that were inspired by Atari's arcade games, the second batch of games released in 1978 were more novel ideas including some based on board games, and were more difficult to sell. Warner's Manny Gerard, who oversaw Atari, brought in Ray Kassar, formerly a vice president at Burlington Industries, to help market Atari's products. Kassar was hired in February 1978 as president of the Atari consumer division. Kassar helped to develop a commercialization strategy for these games through 1978, and oversaw the creation of a new marketing campaign featuring multiple celebrities unified under the slogan "Don't Watch TV Tonight, Play It", and bringing in celebrities to help advertise these games. Kassar also instituted programs to increase production of the VCS and improve quality assurance of the console and games. As they approached the end of 1978, Atari had prepared 800,000 VCS units, but sales were languishing ahead of the holiday sales period.


title: Atari, Inc.

text: Kassar's influence on Atari grew throughout 1978, leading to conflict between Bushnell and Warner Communications. Among other concerns about the direction Kassar was taking the company, Bushnell cautioned Warner that they needed to continue to innovate on the home console and could not simply release games for the VCS indefinitely like a music business. In a November 1978 meeting with Warner Communications, Bushnell said to Gerard that they had produced far too many VCS units to be sold that season and Atari's consumer division would suffer a major loss. However, Kassar's marketing plan, alongside the influence of the arcade hit "Space Invaders" from Taito, led to a large surge in VCS sales, and Atari's consumer division ended the year with in sales. Warner removed Bushnell as chairman and co-CEO of the company, but offered to let him stay on as a director and creative consultant. Bushnell refused and left the company. Bushnell purchased the rights for Pizza Time Theatre for from Warner before leaving. Keenan was moved to Atari's chairman and Kassar assigned as president after Bushnell's departure; Keenan left the company a few months later to join Bushnell in managing Pizza Time Theatre, and Kassar was promoted to CEO and chairman of Atari.


title: Atari, Inc.

text: With Bushnell's departure, Kassar implemented significant changes in the workplace culture in early 1979 to make it more professional, and cancelled several of the engineering programs that Bushnell had established. Kassar also had expressed some frustration with the programmers at Atari, and was known to have called them "spoiled brats" and "prima donnas" at times.


title: Atari, Inc.

text: The changes in management style led to rising tensions from the game developers at Atari who had been used to freedom in developing their titles. One example was "Superman" in 1979, one of the first movie tie-ins that had been sought by Warner to accompany the release of the 1978 film. Warner, through Kassar, had pressured Warren Robinett to convert his game-in-progress "Adventure" from a generic adventure game to the "Superman"-themed title. Robinett refused, but did help fellow programmer John Dunn to make the conversion after he volunteered. Further, after Warner refused to include programmer credits into game manuals over concern that competitors may try to hire them away, Robinett secretly stuck his name into "Adventure" in one of the first known Easter eggs as to bypass this issue. The transition from Bushnell to Kassar led to a large number of departures from the company over the next few years. Four of Atari's programmers—David Crane, Bob Whitehead, Larry Kaplan, and Alan Miller—whose games had contributed collectively to over 60% of the company's game sales in 1978, left Atari in mid-1979 after requesting and being denied additional compensation for their performance, and formed Activision in October of that year to make their own Atari VCS games based on their knowledge of the console. Similarly, Rob Fulop, who programmed the arcade conversion of "Missile Command" for the VCS in 1981 that sold over 2.5 million units, received only a minimal bonus that year, and left with other disgruntled Atari programmers to form Imagic in 1981.


title: Atari, Inc.

text: Beginning in 1979, the Atari coin-operated games division started releasing cabinets incorporating vector graphics displays after the success of the Cinematronics game Space Wars in 1977–78. Their first vector graphics game, "Lunar Lander", was a modest success, but their second arcade title, "Asteroids", was highly popular, displacing "Space Invaders" as the most popular game in the United States. Atari produced over 70,000 "Asteroids" cabinets, and made an estimated from sales. "Asteroids" along with "Space Invaders" helped to usher in the golden age of arcade video games that lasted until around 1983; Atari contributed several more games that were considered part of this golden age, including "Missile Command", "Centipede", and "Tempest".


title: Atari, Inc.

text: A project to design a successor to the VCS started as soon as the system shipped in mid-1977. The original development team, including Meyer, Miner and Decuir, estimated the VCS had a lifespan of about three years, and decided to build the most powerful machine they could given that time frame. They set a goal to be able to support 1978-vintage arcade games, as well as features of the upcoming personal computer such as the Apple II. The project resulted in the first home computers from Atari, the Atari 800 and Atari 400, both launched in 1979. These computer systems were mostly closed systems, and most of the initial games were developed by Atari, drawing from programmers from the VCS line. Sales into early 1980 were poor and there was little to distinguish the computer line from the current console products. In March 1980, the company released "Star Raiders", a space combat game developed by Doug Neubauer based on "Star Trek" game that had been popular on mainframe computers. "Star Raiders" became the Atari 400/800 system seller, but quickly emphasized the lack of software for the computers due to the system's closed nature and the limited rate that Atari's programmers could produce titles. Third-party programmers found means to get technical information about the computer specifications either directly from Atari employees or from reverse engineering, and by late 1980, third-party applications and games began to emerge for the 8-bit computer family, and the specialized magazine "ANALOG Computing" was established for Atari computer programmers to share programming information. While Atari did not formally release development information, they supported this external community by launching the Atari Program Exchange (APX) in 1981, a mail-order service that programmers could offer their applications and games to other users of Atari's 8-bit computers. By this point, Atari's computers were facing new competition from the VIC-20.


title: Atari, Inc.

text: A short-lived Atari Electronics division was created to make electronic games that ran from 1979 to 1981. They successfully released one product, a handheld version of Atari's arcade "Touch Me" game, which played similar to "Simon", in 1979. The division began work on "Cosmos", a system that was to combine LED lights and a holographic screen. Atari had promoted the game at the 1981 CES, but following Alcorn's departure in 1981, opted not to follow through on making it and closed down the Electronics division.


title: Atari, Inc.

text: Moving into 1980, the VCS still lacked a system-selling game. After "Space Invaders" had hit arcades in 1979, Warner instructed Kassar to try to get the rights to an arcade conversion for the game from Taito, while prototype work had already been started on a possible game by Rick Maurer on his own. Once Kassar has secured the rights, Maurer was able to take his work to a form for the VCS, and "Space Invaders" for the VCS was released in March 1980. The game became the VCS's "killer app", helping to sell the console alongside the game, and made Atari an estimated . It also set a roadmap for future game releases on the VCS under Kassar, with more scheduled release plans throughout the year and looking for more licensed arcade conversions and tie-in media.


title: Atari, Inc.

text: Until 1980, the Atari VCS was the only major programmable console on the market and Atari the only supplier for its games, but that year is when Atari began to experience its first major competition as Mattel Electronics brought the Intellivision to market. Activision also released its first set of third-party games for the Atari VCS. Atari took action against Activision starting 1980, first by trying to tarnish the company's reputation, then by taking legal action accusing the four programmers of stealing trade secrets and violating non-disclosure agreements. This lawsuit was eventually settled out of court in 1982, with Activision agreeing to pay a small license fee to Atari for every game sold. This effectively validated Activision's development model and made them the first third-party developer in the industry.


title: Atari, Inc.

text: In 1980, Namco produced the arcade game "Pac-Man", and it reached the United States market by the end of the year. "Pac-Man" soon became a nationwide success, surpassing the popularity of "Asteroids" and creating a wave of "Pac-Mania". Atari was able to secure an exclusive deal with Namco to be able to convert "Pac-Man" to home arcade systems, starting with the Atari VCS version. Atari's management believed that the game would be a sure-fire hit in the same manner as "Space Invaders". However, little attention was devoted to the game itself which was being developed solely by Tod Frye. While Frye was able to get a version of "Pac-Man" on the VCS within the system's limitations, the resulting game was critically panned for many technical issues such as excessive flickering of the on-screen characters. "Pac-Man" was released in March 1982, with Atari running several promotions to increase sales. It sold over seven million units and ultimately was the best-selling VCS game, bringing in over . However, because of the poor technical implementation, "Pac-Man" caused consumers to become more cautious on rushing to purchase new games in the future, and tarnished Atari's image given that the company was trying to compete against low-quality third-party titles that were starting to flood the market.


title: Atari, Inc.

text: Atari discovered in 1981 that General Computer Corporation (GCC) had developed hardware that could be installed onto arcade games to give operators additional options to modify the game, such as their "Super Missile Attack" board that modified Atari's "Missile Command". Atari initially filed suit to stop GCC's products but as they learned more about their products, recognized that GCC had talented engineers, as one of their other products, a modification board for "Pac-Man" was sold back to Midway and eventually became the basis of "Ms. Pac-Man". Atari settled with GCC out of court and brought the company on in a consulting position. GCC developed arcade and VCS games for Atari, and also programmed most of the games for the upcoming Atari 5200 system.


title: Atari, Inc.

text: Atari launched its second major programmable console, the Atari 5200, in late 1982. The unit was based on the same design features that had gone into the Atari 800 and Atari 400 computers, but repackaged as a home console. Alongside the 5200's release, Atari announced it was rebranding the Atari VCS as the Atari 2600 to create a more consist product naming system. The Atari 5200 did not do well on the market as it lacked backward compatibility with Atari VCS/2600 cartridges, a feature offered by the Colecovision. The Atari 5200 only sold about one million units before it was discontinued in 1984.


title: Atari, Inc.

text: By the end of 1982, Atari had hired 4,000 additional employees for a total of 10,000 across its three divisions of arcade games, consumer home consoles, and home computers. The company had more than fifty facilities in the Silicon Valley area. For the first nine months of 1982, Atari contributed half of Warner's revenue and one-third of their operating profit However, at the same time, the company was seeing a high rate of turnover in management positions, which Kassar attributed to the rapid growth of the company. As an industry, the video game market reached about in 1982 and was expected to reach in 1984, rivalling revenues of the film industry, and making the video game industry an overall lucrative prospect.


title: Atari, Inc.

text: To try to remain competitive against Mattel's Intellivision, Atari requested all of its distributors to commit to orders for home console games in 1982 in October 1981, as to allow Atari to anticipate production numbers and meet the expected demand. Distributors expected Atari's games to do well and ordered in large volumes, placing more orders than expected given Atari's past failures to meet demand. By the middle of 1982, a new home console marketplace had appeared, which one distributor called "a totally different business". In addition to Mattel, Coleco had introduced the Colecovision, which shipped in August 1982 with an arcade conversion of the popular "Donkey Kong" as a pack-in game and add-ons that could play Atari 2600 games. Further, Activision, Imagic, and other third-party game developers like Parker Brothers had started releasing Atari 2600 titles that rivaled Atari's own games, reducing Atari's market share of games to 40%. Distributors started to cancel the Atari orders they had placed the prior year, which Gerard said they were "blind-sided" by, having never faced this type of competition before.


title: Atari, Inc.

text: Additionally around October 1981, Atari looked to other licensed properties for games. They secured the rights for "Raiders of the Lost Ark" in late 1981 shortly after the release of the blockbuster film that was released earlier that year. Similarly, after the film "E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial" was released in June 1982, Atari was able to quickly negotiate a license, estimated to have cost Atari , to make a video game based on the film, which was programmed by Howard Scott Warshaw over a period of five weeks to be able to produce the game for the 1982 holiday seasons. "Raiders" and "E.T." were released in November and December 1982, respectively. As distributors had already cancelled orders, these and other games started to stockpile in Atari's warehouses without any sellers. Neither game sold as much as Atari had expected; notably, "E.T." was critically panned and later became known as one of the worst games ever made, and of five million copies produced, only 1.5 million were sold.


title: Atari, Inc.

text: In December 1982, Warner Communications announced that it was expecting significant decline in investor earnings of about 40% for the fourth quarter of the year mostly as a result of slower game cartridge sales from Atari. Warner still remained confident that overall it would see a 10 to 15% growth through 1982, which it considered fair given the current recession. However, earlier in 1982, Warner had expected a 50% growth and using Atari's profits to help support Warner's other media industries, and analysts were less confident in Warner's current outlook; one asked "Why did it happen so quickly? And why were they not in tune with it while it was building?" Later that month, Warner announced that Kassar along with one other Atari executive had sold numerous shares of Warner stock prior to the investor announcement and were engaged with insider trading. The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) investigated Kassar's sale and in September 1983, fined Kassar about . Kassar signed a consent agreement neither admitting nor denying the charges.


title: Atari, Inc.

text: Atari's financial troubles continued into the first quarter of 1983, with an operating loss of compared to an operating profit of in the same quarter in 1982. Atari was still struggling with excess inventory of its Atari 2600 games, and the Atari 5200 had not been as successful as the 2600. The golden age of the arcade was waning, and the arcade division was failing to turn a profit. Further, Atari's venture into home computers was not as successful, as they were losing a price war with Commodore International.


title: Atari, Inc.

text: Atari had gained a poor reputation in the industry. One dealer told "InfoWorld" in early 1984 that "It has totally ruined my business ... Atari has ruined all the independents." A non-Atari executive stated: "There were so many screaming, shouting, threatening dialogues, it's unbelievable that any company in America could conduct itself the way Atari conducted itself. Atari used threats, intimidation and bullying. It's incredible that anything could be accomplished. Many people left Atari. There was incredible belittling and humiliation of people. We'll never do business with them again." Stating that "Atari has never made a dime in microcomputers", John J. Anderson wrote in early 1984, "Many of the people I spoke to at Atari between 1980 and 1983 had little or no idea what the products they were selling were all about, or who if anyone would care. In one case, we were fed mis- and disinformation on a frighteningly regular basis, from a highly-placed someone supposedly in charge of all publicity concerning the computer systems. And chilling as the individual happenstance was, it seems to have been endemic at Atari at the time.":


title: Atari, Inc.

text: Despite losses, Atari remained the number one console maker in every market except Japan. Nintendo, a Japanese video game company, planned to release its first programmable video game console, the Famicom (later branded as Nintendo Entertainment System (NES)) in Japan in July 1983. Looking to sell the console in international markets that same year, Nintendo offered a licensing deal whereby Atari would build and sell the system, paying Nintendo a royalty. The deal was in the works throughout 1983, and the two companies tentatively decided to sign the agreement at the June 1983 CES. However, Coleco demonstrated its new Adam computer with Nintendo's "Donkey Kong". Kassar was furious, as Atari owned the rights to publish "Donkey Kong" for computers, which he accused Nintendo of violating. Nintendo, in turn, criticized Coleco, which only owned the console rights to the game. Coleco had legal grounds to challenge the claim though since Atari had only purchased the floppy disk rights to the game, while the Adam version was cartridge-based. Negotiations became protracted after Kassar's departure in mid-1983, and with any deal unlikely to be realized before year-end sales, Nintendo dropped out. Instead, Nintendo worked through their Nintendo of America subsidiary to release the system on their own in 1985.


title: Atari, Inc.

text: In 1983, the company set up a partnership with MCA Videogames, a division of MCA Inc. to set up a joint venture Studio Games, whereas the venture gave them access to properties handled by MCA's sister studio Universal Pictures.


title: Atari, Inc.

text: Kassar eventually resigned as CEO of Atari in July 1983 over mounting financial losses, and Warner replaced him with James J. Morgan, a vice president from Philip Morris Inc. Stating "one company can't have seven presidents", Morgan stated a goal of more closely integrating the company's divisions to end "the fiefdoms and the politics and all the things that caused the problems". Morgan implemented processes to reduce operating costs at Atari, including laying off about 3,000 jobs and moving 4,000 more manufacturing positions to Asia.


title: Atari, Inc.

text: Atari's financial problems continued throughout the rest of 1983, with second quarter losses of . The company discreetly buried more 700,000 units of its unsold stock in a landfill near Alamogordo, New Mexico in September 1983, though this had become an urban legend that millions of unsold cartridges were buried there.


title: Atari, Inc.

text: Atari's problems reverberated across the entire video game industry in the United States as consumer confidence in video games had weakened significantly, contributing significantly to the video game crash of 1983. Retailers became wary of selling video games, making it difficult for console and video game manufacturers to sell their products. Further, the rising popularity of home computers drove sales away from game consoles. To clear stock as to make way to new games, retailers also heavily discounted consoles and games which also hurt these companies financially. Many of the new companies that had sprung up to take advantage of the rising growth of video games prior to 1983 shut down, liquidating their assets and further contributing to the excess unsold stock. Established companies like Atari faced difficulty in selling their products against these volumes, which further contributed to their losses. By the end of 1983, Atari reported a total loss for the year of , compared to the operating profit in 1982.


title: Atari, Inc.

text: Despite its financial issues, Atari continued to innovate. In March 1983, it established an Ataritel division to develop telephones with screens and computer features with consumer-ready products to reach market by 1984. In October 1983, Atari created its Atarisoft division, producing software from its own library to work on its rival systems including for computers from Commodore, Apple, Texas Instruments, and IBM, as well as console games for Colecovision. GCC, inspired by the Atari 2600 add-ons available for the Colecovision and for the Atari 5200, start working on the design of a new console, one that would be more advanced than the 2600 but would support direct compatibility with Atari 2600 games. Their project resulted in the Atari 7800 ProSystem, which had been announced in early 1984. Morgan had shut down the Atari 5200 production towards Atari 7800 manufacturing for its mid-1984 release, but with Warner's sale of the company in June 1984, the launch was cancelled. The Atari 7800 was later introduced under the Atari Corporation branding in May 1986.


title: Atari, Inc.

text: By the end of 1983, Warner's stock price slid from $60 to $20, and the company began searching for a buyer for Atari. When Texas Instruments exited the home-computer market in November 1983 because of the price war with Commodore, many believed that Atari would be next. Its Atarisoft games for rival computers sold well, and a rumor stated that Atari planned to discontinue hardware and only sell software. Morgan stated that he expected to bring the company back to profitability by mid-1984, though warned he was expecting more losses for the first six months of the year.


title: Atari, Inc.

text: On July 3, 1984, in a surprise announcement, Warner announced that they had sold off the consumer products division of Atari, which included the console and computer production, game development, and Atarisoft divisions, to former Commodore International CEO Jack Tramiel in exchange for taking on roughly in debt held by Warner. Tramiel merged these assets into his own Tramel Technology Limited, which he renamed Atari Corporation. In the transition, Morgan was given "a leave of several months", with Tramiel's son Sam Tramiel and other of his aides already taking leadership of the company. Warner renamed Atari, Inc. to Atari Games, which now primarily consisted of the coin-operated games, arcade operations, and Ataritel divisions. Ataritel was sold to Mitsubishi later in 1984; Mitsubishi released one of the first digital videophones based on Atari's original designs under the brand Lumaphone by 1986.


title: Atari, Inc.

text: Under Tramiel, the Atari Corporation initially focused heavily on home computers before it revisited game consoles, including a revised design of the Atari 2600, the Atari 2600 Jr., but eventually dropped out of the hardware market by 1996 following the failure of the Atari Jaguar console. In 1998 the Atari Corporation properties were acquired by Hasbro Interactive, which was subsequently sold to Infogrames in 2001, with Infogrames rebranding itself as Atari SA and holding most of the intellectual property rights to the console games developed by Atari, Inc.


title: Atari, Inc.

text: Warner sold a majority stake in Atari Games to Namco in 1985 while retaining a 40% share. Namco later lost interest in operating Atari Games and sold 33% of its shares to a group of employees led by then-president Hideyuki Nakajima in 1986. As the company was now split between three entities, Warner (40%), Namco (40%), and the employees (20%), and none of them held a controlling share, Atari Games effectively became an independent company. The company re-entered home console publishing as well, but unable to use the Atari name in the home market as the rights were held by Atari Corporation, they created a subsidiary called Tengen for console publishing. In 1994, Time Warner, as the company had become known following its merger with Time Inc., bought out Namco's share of the company, placing it under their new Time Warner Interactive label. After only two years, it was sold again to WMS Industries in 1996, and made part of Midway Games when that company was spun off as an independent company in 1998 as the Midway Games West studio. The studio was disbanded in 2003, marking the end of continuous operations of the last remaining part of the original Atari. The Atari Games library was retained by Midway until 2009, when amidst financial troubles, the company was sold to Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment.


title: Giant grouper

text: The giant grouper (Epinephelus lanceolatus), also known as the Queensland grouper, brindle grouper or mottled-brown sea bass, is a species of marine ray-finned fish, a grouper from the subfamily Epinephelinae which is part of the family Serranidae, which also includes the anthias and sea basses. It has a wide Indo-Pacific distribution and is one of the largest extant species of bony fish.


title: Giant grouper

text: The giant grouper has a robust body which has a standard length equivalent to 2.4 to 3.4 times its depth. The dorsal profile of the head and the intraorbital area are convex, The propercle has a rounded corner and a finely serrated margin. The gill cover has a convex upper margin. There are 11 spines and 14-16 soft rays in the dorsal fin while the anal fin has 3 spines and 8 soft rays. The caudal fin is slightly rounded. There are 54 to 62 scales in its lateral line. The adults are grayish-brown in colour overlain with a mottled pattern and with darker fins. The small juveniles are yellow with wide, dark irregular bars and irregular dark spots on their fins. The giant grouper can grow to huge size with the maximum recorded standard length being , although they are more common around , and a maximum published weight of .


title: Giant grouper

text: The giant grouper has a wide Indo-Pacific distribution, it is the most widely distributed species of grouper in the world. It occurs from the Red Sea and the eastern coasts of Africa as far south as Algoa Bay in South Africa and across the Indian Ocean into the Western Pacific Ocean as far east as the Pitcairn Islands and Hawaii. They occur as far north as southern Japan and as far south as Australia. In Australia it is found from Rottnest Island in Western Australia north and east along the tropical coasts of Australia, including offshore reefs, and then south along the eastern coast to Woy Woy, New South Wales. It also occurs around Christmas Island and Cocos (Keeling) Islands and the Elizabeth and Middleton Reefs Marine National Park Reserve in the Tasman Sea. There have also been reports from the Younghusband Peninsula in South Australia and north eastern New Zealand. It is absent from the Persian Gulf but it is present off the coast of Pakistan and southern Oman. It has been listed as a potential invasive species in the Bahamas but its presence in that region requires verification.


title: Giant grouper

text: The giant grouper is a species of shallow water and can be found at depths of . It is associated with reefs and is the largest known bony fish found on reefs. Large specimens have been caught from shore and in harbours. They are found in caves and in wrecks while the secretive juveniles occur in reefs and are infrequently observed. The adults are mainly solitary and hold territories on the outer reef and in lagoons. They have also been caught in turbid water over silt or mud sea beds by prawn fishermen. The giant grouper is an opportunistic ambush predator which feeds on a variety of fishes, as well as small sharks, juvenile sea turtles, crustaceans and molluscs which are all swallowed whole. Fish which inhabit coral reefs and rocky areas favour spiny lobsters as prey and a specimen taken off Maui in Hawaii had a stomach contents of two spiny lobsters and a number of crabs. Fish living in estuarine environments in South Africa were found to be feeding almost exclusively on the crab "Scylla serrata". This species is normally solitary and long-lived. They are, however, curious and frequently approach divers closely. They are not generally considered dangerous to humans but divers are advised to treat large specimens with caution and not to hand feed them.


title: Giant grouper

text: Like most groupers, giant groupers are protogynous hermaphrodites. They spawn on a lunar cycle, with spawns lasting about 7 days. They are aggregative broadcast spawners, usually with several females per male. Studies in captive populations suggest that the dominant male and female begin the spawning event as nearly the only spawners for the first day or two, but other members of the aggregation fertilize more eggs as the event progresses, with even the most recently turned males fathering offspring. Giant groupers are diandric protogynous hermaphrodites, meaning that although some males develop from reproductively functional females other males start to produce sperm without ever having gone through a phase as a reproductive female.


title: Giant grouper

text: The giant grouper was first formally described as "Holocentras lanceolatus" in 1790 by the German medical doctor and naturalist Marcus Elieser Bloch (1723–1799) with the type locality given as the East Indies. Felipe Poey assigned the giant and goliath groupers ("Epinephelus itajara" and "E. quinquefasciatus", which was then regarded as a synonym of "E itajara") to the genus "Promicrops" but in 1972 this was designated as a subgenus of "Epinephelus". However, these species are still each other's closest relatives.


title: Giant grouper

text: The giant grouper is a highly valued food fish and is taken by both commercial and recreational fisheries. As well as the consumption of its flesh its skin, gall bladder and stomach are used in Traditional Chinese Medicine. It is valued in Hong Kong as a live fish for the live reef food fish trade, especially smaller specimens. This species is cultured in mariculture and this practice is widespread but there is a restricted supply of juveniles, although hatcheries in Taiwan have produced captive bred juveniles, exporting some for to be grown on in other parts of South-East Asia. Many of the fish produced in aquaculture are hybrids between this species and "E. fuscoguttatus".


title: Propionic acid

text: Propionic acid (, from the Greek words πρῶτος : "prōtos", meaning "first", and πίων : "píōn", meaning "fat"; also known as propanoic acid) is a naturally occurring carboxylic acid with chemical formula CHCHCOH. It is a liquid with a pungent and unpleasant smell somewhat resembling body odor. The anion CHCHCO as well as the salts and esters of propionic acid are known as propionates or propanoates.


title: Propionic acid

text: Propionic acid was first described in 1844 by Johann Gottlieb, who found it among the degradation products of sugar. Over the next few years, other chemists produced propionic acid by different means, none of them realizing they were producing the same substance. In 1847, French chemist Jean-Baptiste Dumas established all the acids to be the same compound, which he called propionic acid, from the Greek words πρῶτος (prōtos), meaning "first", and πίων (piōn), meaning "fat", because it is the smallest H(CH)COOH acid that exhibits the properties of the other fatty acids, such as producing an oily layer when salted out of water and having a soapy potassium salt.


title: Propionic acid

text: Propionic acid has physical properties intermediate between those of the smaller carboxylic acids, formic and acetic acids, and the larger fatty acids. It is miscible with water, but can be removed from water by adding salt. As with acetic and formic acids, it consists of hydrogen bonded pairs of molecules in both the liquid and the vapor.


title: Propionic acid

text: Propionic acid displays the general properties of carboxylic acids: it can form amide, ester, anhydride, and chloride derivatives. It undergoes the Hell–Volhard–Zelinsky reaction that involves α-halogenation of a carboxylic acid with bromine, catalysed by phosphorus tribromide, in this case to form 2-bromopropanoic acid, CHCHBrCOOH. This product has been used to prepare a racemic mixture of alanine by ammonolysis.


title: Propionic acid

text: In industry, propionic acid is mainly produced by the hydrocarboxylation of ethylene using nickel carbonyl as the catalyst:


title: Propionic acid

text: It is also produced by the aerobic oxidation of propionaldehyde. In the presence of cobalt or manganese salts (manganese propionate is most commonly used), this reaction proceeds rapidly at temperatures as mild as 40–50 °C:


title: Propionic acid

text: Large amounts of propionic acid were once produced as a byproduct of acetic acid manufacture. At the current time, the world's largest producer of propionic acid is BASF, with approximately 150 kt/a production capacity.


title: Propionic acid

text: Biotechnological production of propionic acid mainly uses "Propionibacterium" strains. However, large scale production of propionic acid by "Propionibacteria" faces challenges such as severe inhibition of end-products during cell growth and the formation of by-products (acetic acid and succinic acid). One approach to improve productivity and yield during fermentation is through the use of cell immobilization techniques, which also promotes easy recovery, reuse of the cell biomass and enhances microorganisms’ stress tolerance. In 2018, 3D printing technology was used for the first time to create a matrix for cell immobilization in fermentation. Propionic acid production by "Propionibacterium acidipropionici" immobilized on 3D-printed nylon beads was chosen as a model study. It was shown that those 3D-printed beads were able to promote high density cell attachment and propionic acid production, which could be adapted to other fermentation bioprocesses. Other cell immobilization matrices have been tested, such as recycled-glass Poraver and fibrous-bed bioreactor.


title: Propionic acid

text: Alternative methods of production have been trialled, by genetically engineering strains of "Escherichia coli" to incorporate the necessary pathway, the Wood-Werkman cycle.


title: Propionic acid

text: Propionic acid inhibits the growth of mold and some bacteria at levels between 0.1 and 1% by weight. As a result, some propionic acid produced is consumed as a preservative for both animal feed and food for human consumption. For animal feed, it is used either directly or as its ammonium salt. The antibiotic monensin is added to cattle feed to favor propionibacteria over acetic acid producers in the rumen; this produces less carbon dioxide and feed conversion is better. This application accounts for about half of the world production of propionic acid. Another major application is as a preservative in baked goods, which use the sodium and calcium salts. As a food additive, it is approved for use in the EU, USA, Australia and New Zealand.


title: Propionic acid

text: Propionic acid is also useful as an intermediate in the production of other chemicals, especially polymers. Cellulose-acetate-propionate is a useful thermoplastic. Vinyl propionate is also used. In more specialized applications, it is also used to make pesticides and pharmaceuticals. The esters of propionic acid have fruit-like odors and are sometimes used as solvents or artificial flavorings.


title: Propionic acid

text: In biogas plants, propionic acid is a common intermediate product, which is formed by fermentation with propionic acid bacteria. Its degradation in anaerobic environments (e.g. biogas plants) requires the activity of complex microbial communities.


title: Propionic acid

text: Propionic acid is produced biologically as its coenzyme A ester, propionyl-CoA, from the metabolic breakdown of fatty acids containing odd numbers of carbon atoms, and also from the breakdown of some amino acids. Bacteria of the genus "Propionibacterium" produce propionic acid as the end-product of their anaerobic metabolism. This class of bacteria is commonly found in the stomachs of ruminants and the sweat glands of humans, and their activity is partially responsible for the odor of Emmental cheese, American "Swiss cheese" and sweat.


title: Propionic acid

text: The metabolism of propionic acid begins with its conversion to propionyl coenzyme A, the usual first step in the metabolism of carboxylic acids. Since propionic acid has three carbons, propionyl-CoA cannot directly enter either beta oxidation or the citric acid cycles. In most vertebrates, propionyl-CoA is carboxylated to -methylmalonyl-CoA, which is isomerised to -methylmalonyl-CoA. A vitamin B-dependent enzyme catalyzes rearrangement of -methylmalonyl-CoA to succinyl-CoA, which is an intermediate of the citric acid cycle and can be readily incorporated there.


title: Propionic acid

text: Propionic acid serves as a substrate for hepatic gluconeogenesis via conversion to succinyl-CoA. Additionally, exogenous propionic acid administration results in more endogenous glucose production than can be accounted for by gluconeogenic conversion alone. Exogenous propionic acid may upregulate endogenous glucose production via increases in norepinephrine and glucagon, suggesting that chronic ingestion of propionic acid may have adverse metabolic consequences.


title: Propionic acid

text: In propionic acidemia, a rare inherited genetic disorder, propionate acts as a metabolic toxin in liver cells by accumulating in mitochondria as propionyl-CoA and its derivative, methylcitrate, two tricarboxylic acid cycle inhibitors. Propanoate is metabolized oxidatively by glia, which suggests astrocytic vulnerability in propionic acidemia when intramitochondrial propionyl-CoA may accumulate. Propionic acidemia may alter both neuronal and glial gene expression by affecting histone acetylation. When propionic acid is infused directly into rodents' brains, it produces reversible behavior (e.g., hyperactivity, dystonia, social impairment, perseveration) and brain changes (e.g., innate neuroinflammation, glutathione depletion) that may be used as a means to model autism in rats.


title: Propionic acid

text: The human skin is host of several species of "Propionibacteria". The most notable one is the "Cutibacterium acnes" (formerly known as "Propionibacterium acnes"), which lives mainly in the sebaceous glands of the skin and is one of the principal causes of acne. Propionate is observed to be among the most common short-chain fatty acids produced in the large intestine of humans by gut microbiota in response to indigestible carbohydrates (dietary fiber) in the diet. The role of the gut microbiota and their metabolites, including propionate, in mediating brain function has been reviewed.


title: Propionic acid

text: A study in mice suggests that propionate is produced by the bacteria of the genus "Bacteroides" in the gut, and that it offers some protection against "Salmonella" there. Another study finds that fatty acid propionate can calm the immune cells that drive up blood pressure, thereby protecting the body from damaging effects of high blood pressure.


title: Propionic acid

text: The propionate , or propanoate, ion is CHCOO, the conjugate base of propionic acid. It is the form found in biological systems at physiological pH. A propionic, or propanoic, compound is a carboxylate salt or ester of propionic acid. In these compounds, propionate is often written in shorthand, as CHCHCO or simply EtCO.


title: Propionic acid

text: Propionates should not be confused with propenoates (commonly known as acrylates), the ions/salts/esters of propenoic acid (also known as 2-propenoic acid or acrylic acid).


title: Paul O'Neill (baseball)

text: Paul Andrew O'Neill (born February 25, 1963) is an American former baseball right fielder who played 17 seasons in Major League Baseball (MLB). He played for the Cincinnati Reds (1985–1992) and New York Yankees (1993–2001). O'Neill compiled 281 home runs, 1,269 runs batted in, 2,107 hits, and a lifetime batting average of .288. He won the American League batting title in 1994 with a .359 average. He was a five-time World Series champion and a five-time All-Star (1991, 1994, 1995, 1997, and 1998).


title: Paul O'Neill (baseball)

text: O'Neill is the only player to have played on the winning team in three perfect games. He was in right field for the Reds for Tom Browning's perfect game in 1988. He caught the final out (a fly ball) in the Yankees' David Wells' perfect game in 1998, and he made a diving catch in right field and doubled to help the Yankees win David Cone's perfect game in 1999.


title: Paul O'Neill (baseball)

text: After retiring from playing baseball, O'Neill became a broadcaster for the Yankees on the YES Network. He currently works on the network as the lead game analyst and color commentator.


title: Paul O'Neill (baseball)

text: A native of Columbus, Ohio, O'Neill and his family were fans of the Cincinnati Reds. His older sister was Molly O'Neill (1952-2019), a chef, cookbook author, and food writer for "The New York Times".


title: Paul O'Neill (baseball)

text: He played baseball and basketball. In basketball, O'Neill earned all-state honors in his senior year 1981 and Central District Player of the Year.


title: Paul O'Neill (baseball)

text: O'Neill made his major-league debut on September 3, 1985, and singled in his first at-bat. For the rest of the 1985 season, O'Neill played in five games with four hits and one RBI. He spent most of the 1986 season in the minors. He played only in three games with the Major League team during 1986 and did not get a hit in the majors that year. O'Neill split his time between the minors and the Major League team in 1987. He appeared in 84 games for the Reds that year, batting .256 with seven home runs and 28 RBI.


title: Paul O'Neill (baseball)

text: In 1988, his first full season with the Reds, O'Neill played 145 games, batting .252 with 16 home runs and 73 RBIs. O'Neill played 117 games in 1989 batting .276 with 15 home runs and 74 RBI.


title: Paul O'Neill (baseball)

text: In 1989, O'Neill had a similar stat line, batting .276 on the year with 15 home runs and 74 RBIs. On July 5th, he famously kicked a ball back into the infield after he bobbled it in shallow right, preventing a runner from second from scoring on the play (a single). The play is referenced on his Baseball-Reference page, where his characteristics are listed as "Bats: Left, Throws: Left, Kicks: Left".


title: Paul O'Neill (baseball)

text: In 1990, O'Neill played in 145 games batting .270 with 16 home runs and 78 RBI. O'Neill batted .277 during the 1990 postseason with a home run and 5 RBI as the Reds won the World Series over the Oakland Athletics. O'Neill clashed with Reds manager Lou Piniella, who wanted O'Neill to change his swing to hit more home runs. In response to the clash, O'Neill improved greatly in 1991 by playing 152 games with a career high of 28 home runs. He batted .256 with 91 RBI as well. In his final season as a member of the Reds, O'Neill played in 148 games batting .246 with 14 home runs and 66 RBI.


title: Paul O'Neill (baseball)

text: On November 3, 1992, the Reds traded O'Neill to the Yankees for Roberto Kelly. In his first season as a Yankee, O'Neill played 141 games batting .311 with 20 home runs and 75 RBIs.


title: Paul O'Neill (baseball)

text: During the strike-shortened 1994 season, O'Neill played 103 games with a .359 batting average, 21 home runs, and 83 RBIs which led him to be selected to his second All-Star game. O'Neill won the batting title, and the Yankees led the East division by six and a half games when the players' strike ended the season. He signed a four-year, $19 million contract. In 1995, O'Neill played in 127 games batting .300 with 22 home runs, 96 RBIs, and an MLB-leading 25 double plays committed. He led the Yankees to the postseason for the first time since 1981, but they lost to the Seattle Mariners in the division series despite winning the first 2 games.


title: Paul O'Neill (baseball)

text: On April 30, 1996, O'Neill hit a long home run to Eutaw Street off of Arthur Rhodes while playing at Oriole Park at Camden Yards. O'Neill famously was his own toughest critic, seemingly never satisfied with his own performance and known for his emotion on the field; when disappointed with his performance or angry with an umpire's decision he would attack water coolers or toss bats on the field. His tirades were both praised and criticized by the media and fans. O'Neill was involved in a brawl with Seattle catcher John Marzano. O'Neill had complained to the umpire that the previous pitch was high and inside. Marzano then hit the much bigger Paul O'Neill with a haymaker. The two grappled, and the benches cleared. During the 1996 season, O'Neill played in 150 games batting .302, 19 home runs, 91 RBIs, and a career-high 102 walks. He ended Game 5 of the 1996 World Series by robbing former Yankee teammate Luis Polonia of the Atlanta Braves of an extra-base hit, preserving a 1–0 victory for the Yankees. The Yankees would then win the series, which was their first World Series championship since 1978.


title: Paul O'Neill (baseball)

text: In 1997, O'Neill played in 149 games batting .324 with 21 home runs and 117 RBIs. He led the Yankees into the postseason again, batting .421 with two home runs and seven RBIs but lost the division series to the Cleveland Indians. In 1998, O'Neill played in 152 games batting .317 with 24 home runs and 116 RBIs. He led the AL by grounding into 22 double plays. O'Neill led the Yankees into the World Series where they won against the San Diego Padres in a 4-game sweep and helped the team win a record 125 games. In 1999, O'Neill played in 153 games batting .285 with 19 home runs and 110 RBIs. O'Neill played Game 4 of the 1999 World Series just hours after his father died. The Yankees eventually won the game and swept the Braves to win their 25th World Series Championship.