If I had to make a list of the most brilliant and unsung minds the world ever saw, it would be the following: Nolan Bushnell (Father of the Video Game Industry and founder of Atari Inc and Chuck E Cheese), Alfred Carlton Gilbert (Toy designer, magician, athlete, and the man responsible for the Erector Set Metal Construction playset), Professor Julius Sumner Miller (American Physicist that hosted a tv show that gained more of a following in Australia than it did in the US), and on the top of that list is this person: David Judd Nutting. Getting his start as an industrial engineer after leaving the Army, his greatest contribution to vehicles is the Jeep Grand Wagoneer. He was also part of the team that worked on the Enstrom Helicopter. In 1966, he shifted his focus on electronic gaming which in those days thrived with pinball and electromechanical arcade games. Dave entered this market with 1967's IQ Computer (an electromechanical quiz game) and then with the electromechanical shooter Red Baron in 1970. In 1974, Dave founded Dave Nutting Associates (Not to be confused with the similarly named Nutting Associates founded by Dave's brother William in the late 60's. It should be worth noting the Nutting Associates founded by Will distributed the first commercially released video game Computer Space in November of 1971) which in 1975 was bought out by Midway. Under this new ownership would come a renaissance of arcade cult classics for Dave Nutting Associates as they gave the world Gun Fight (which was the US version of the 1974 Taito Japanese Arcade Game Western Gun. The difference was Gun Fight used a microprocessor chip), Seawolf, The Amazing Maze Game, Wizards of Wor, Gorf, and the 1982 video game pinball hybrid Baby Pac-Man (aka one of the American made Pac-Man sequels and/or spin-offs made without Namco's permission). In 1984 at the height of the 2nd US Video Game Market Crash (the first happened in 1977 and came and went like that), Midway closed Dave Nutting Associates. After his 18 year venture in electronic gaming, Dave Nutting continued being an industrial and technical engineer. He even wrote two books: Language of Nature: Quantum World Revealed (2005) dealing with quantum mechanics and the 2012 Creative Motivation book Secrets of a Creative Mind. Enclosed is one of the only photos I could find of Dave. Sorry I couldn't find a younger photo, but other than that, here's one of the video game industry's most brilliant pioneers
