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> a toy whistle that was, at the time, packaged in boxes of Cap'n Crunch cereal could emit a tone at precisely 2600 hertz... 2600: The Hacker Quarterly is named
by lylejohnson 16y ago
> a toy whistle that was, at the time, packaged in boxes of Cap'n Crunch cereal could emit a tone at precisely 2600 hertz... 2600: The Hacker Quarterly is named after this whistle frequency
Now I'm curious whether the Atari 2600 was also named after this. I've just done a little bit of Googling but so far haven't come up with any hints on the origin of the game console's name. Does anyone know?
- raganwald 16y agoNot sure, but the magazine "2600" is absolutely named after this. FWIW, Wikipedia suggests otherwise: The console was originally sold as the Atari VCS, for Video Computer System. Following the release of the Atari 5200, in 1982, the VCS was renamed "Atari 2600", after the unit's Atari part number, CX2600.
- M1573RMU74710N 16y agoIIRC it's because it's model designation was CX2600. They didn't use the 2600 designation originally (they called it the Atari VGS or something like that).I think they started using it because like Pong, they planned to release various versions of the system. Whether the model number was a reference to that is hard to say. It's not like they have much to do with eachother, and Atari had been naming their products with C---- model numbers for years...but it's conceivable that someone said "let's make it model 2600" with 2600hz in mind.