In 1974, several Atari engineers began working on a way to bring
the Pong arcade experience home. In doing so, they unwittingly entered
Atari in to the Consumer (home) Electronics market which lead to the
creation of the Atari Consumer division.

Under the banner Innovative Leisure, Atari's home products
in the mid 1970's ran from a plethora of pong consoles to more innovative
products such as the music machine. By the late 70's however, most of
the focus of Consumer had been moved to Atari's Video Computer System.

While some diverse projects continued in to the early 80's (as shown
in our dedicated system prototypes section), Atari's programmable
console and home computers remained at the forefront of it's
resources. Never again would Atari see the diversity it enjoyed in the
experimental entertainment years of the mid 70's.