The document traces some of the early pioneers of video games from 1958-1980, including William Higinbotham who created Tennis for Two in 1958, Steve Russell who created Spacewar! on the DEC PDP-1 computer in 1961, Ralph Baer who worked on the Magnavox Odyssey console, and Nolan Bushnell who founded Atari and created early games like Computer Space in 1971 and PONG in 1972 which helped drive mainstream success for the emerging video game industry.