The Atari Museum was founded by Curt Vendel who is the US contact and webmaster of the AM site.     Karl Morris is the UK/European arm of the Atari Museum while Markus handles the Atari History Site: Denmark , David Leonardis is based here in the US.  Brian Wiklem, a good friend and active member of the video game industry is also contributing great assistance.   Christopher Strong & Glenn Bruner, both masterful electronics wizards have constantly discovered new technical information to share with the public.   George Reese has recently come onboard and is our resident devouted Atari 5200 fanatic.  Some of the very frequent former Atari employee's such as Al Alcorn, Mike Albaugh, Steve Bristow, Owen Rubin, Regan Cheng and Gary Rubio are always contributing and sharing their insight and assistance to the site.   Owen Rubin  is even hosting his website (www.orubin.com) here at the Atari Museum.

 Combined, we have established a world wide presence in keeping Atari's history alive.  We maintain and update the Atari Museum here on the web at www.atarimuseum.com   Many years before this, Curt Vendel maintained contact with the Atari community through FIDOnet which was a network of Bulletin Board Systems run by individuals who maintained Atari message bases as well as Compuserve, he also ran an Atari users group (SIAUG) and attended other user group meetings to show to members some of the recovered Atari items and paperwork over the years as well as writing  many articles for other New York based Atari users groups (BAUG) and Bulletin Board Systems (Fordham Prep).

How long has the Atari Museum been in existence?

  The Atari Museum was formerly named in 1997 when several former Atari employees and Curt Vendel discussed the large accumulation of paperwork, memo's, hardware data, engineering logs, software and hardware that had in fact become the history of all that is Atari and come together into one primary source.   Since so many former Atari people have come together and directed so much of their time and assistance for this effort the site was formerly named the Atari Museum .  Before this it was an Atari website on the web showing many non-released products. Much early than that a Bulletin Board system was run out of New York City called "The Star Trek BBS" from 1986-1988 (though from 1984-1985 it ran part time from 11pm to 6am then in 1989 it became "The Earth Access Center" and answered and corrected questions and postings about Atari history and products.
 

Why is Atari Museum doing this?

  At one point in time Atari was a household name like Coca-Cola, Band-Aid and McDonalds. Now in the Sega/Sony/Nintendo generation many only know Atari as that "game company in the 80's that did Pac Man or something".  Atari's history and its accuracy are quickly being lost as each new game console and computer system is introduced.    Many people never knew about many of the projects and technologies that Atari pioneered, or they did more then just videogames and had its own microprocessor design facility, a new Telecommunications division, it was looking into holographic games, did work for the US Military and was even looking into starting an on-line video games service through Warner/Amex Cable.   Even during the first years of Atari's computer division, IBM was in talks with Atari about a joint computer system or even in buying Atari completely.    Atari had a wide spread influence on the entire gamming and computing industry and many people working today can trace their roots back to Atari.   The Atari Historical Society is trying to track down and recover as much of the lost history of Atari as possible.   Due to the mishandling of previous owners of Atari after the sale from Warner Communications, Atari's legendary history from its archives was literally thrown out and discarded with no care, so we have made it a point to recover as much as possible and to reconstruct all that was Atari to help preserve it and help present this to the world for all to see and read.

Can people view the actual pieces in the museum in person?

  Yes, the Atari Museum frequently displays items at various video gaming and computing events around the country and also places items on loan to shows and museums around the United States and Europe  for display at physical Museums.   Also we have been scanning and digitizing as much printed material, diskettes, ROM chips and VHS video tapes as we can to preserve these items and put them up publicly.

I'm a Former Atari Employee.  How can I help?

  If you are a former Atari employee from Atari Inc, Atari Corp or Atari Games Corp (Midway West) please contact us, we'd like to hear from you.
 
 

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