A chapter from the history of couch potatoes and procrastinators
In the 1950s, Dvorak Sr. was an engineer working in the instrumentation division of Brookhaven National Laboratory on Long Island. Using designs supplied by his colleague, physicist William Higinbotham, Dvorak put together Tennis for Two — a simple video game that allowed players to bounce a ball over a net — for an open house at the lab. A horde of visitors swamped the Tennis for Two exhibit when it was unveiled on Oct. 18, 1958, but Bob Jr. got a sneak preview a few weeks in advance when he visited the lab with his father. For the precocious seven-year-old, the game was the most amazing thing he had ever seen.