Ted Dabney (far left) stands in front of a Pong arcade machine in 1973 with (left to right) co-founder Nolan Bushnell, head of finance Fred Marincic, and the man credited with the idea for Pong, Allan Alcorn…from NPR News.

Mr Dabney has a good chart for an engineer- lots of earth signs and little air to get in the way (air being inharmonious to earth would make him dawdle).  He was born on May 12, 1937 in San Francisco, California, his parents divorced when he was young and he did the same when his daughters were young too.

                                        No ping, just Pong

The name of the game, Pong, came from his sailboat, hence salty Neptune at Virgo 17 in the fifth house to Juno at 26 where partnerships blossom and while not opposite Saturn in the eleventh, the latter planet still led to disappointment in friendships when Bushnell pushed him out and kept the millions of Atari for himself.  The Mars in Sagittarius in the seventh house, trine, did not help in this case but probably added fuel to the fire, as did the third trine in Cancer set the scenario for an explosive partnership.

Water trines never stay still, but move on, and so did Dabney and Bushnell’s partnership, this time working out better for the fun fare of Chuck E. Cheese, the family video game pizza parlour (Juno had the last laugh there as second time was a charm, for she is trine his exalted Moon and  Taurean Mercury).

Mr. Dabney died in Los Angeles at 81 on May 26th.  Nolan Bushnell sent his regrets.  He was a Locomotive Temperament Type, and after noting a few on this pages, we know that they have to do it their way (see Rex Tillerson) or not at all.  With Venus starting this train, chances are most of his ideas just came to him out of the blue (often called inspiration) based on something he really enjoyed (sailing and pizza).  The end of track is Uranus just coming up to his Ascendant, telling us that out of all that sweat and hard work came the ability to transmute  it to genius.

Loved the game.