Atari was a computer company. Not just a computer company - for many The computer company. What is so special about Atari? Well it was started 1972 by Nolan Bushnel (28 year at the time) who invented the first coin-up computer game - Pong. It was some sort of tennis. You used a paddle to control a vertical line. With this line you tried to return a "ball" to your opponent. The opponent could be the computer or a friend. The ball bounced on your line and on the ceiling and floor. If your oppenent was not able to return the ball you won one point.
The first racing game was also released by Atari - Pole Position. Other famous games released by Atari is Centiped, Milliped, Break-out, and Star Wars. And a lots of more.
In 1976 Atari was bought by Warner and in the same year Atari released the first game computer for the homes VCS 2600. It was later followed by a home computer Atari 400. And later followed by more computers -Atari VCS 7200, 800, 600XL, 1200XL, 65 XE, 130 XE, 130 XE Game System, 260 ST, 520 ST, 520 STFM, 520 STE, 1040 ST, 1040 STF, 1040 STFM, 1040 STE, 1 MEGA ST, 2 MEGA ST, 4 MEGA ST, MEGA STE, TT, Falcon, Atari Transputer Workstation, Lynx, Jaguar, Portfolio, ST Book, and PCs.
Many people have been working for Atari. For example Steven Jobs. One of the reasons for Steven Jobs and Stephen Wozinak to call their company Apple was to become before Atari in the telephone book.
When former founder of Commodore Sam Tramiel bought Atari the first 16-bit computers was released. It used the Motorola 68000, which is a Sixteen (data) - Twenty four (adress) processor (the external adress range was twenty four bits, the internal was thirty two). There fore the name 1040 ST. It had one mega byte memory. The version with built in floppy added an F to the name. The rf-modulator (so you could connect it to a TV) added an M.
Other computers worth mentioning is:
Portfolio - A palm size PC. This was long before Windows CE.
Lynx - A handheld game computer. With colors!
ATW - Atari Transputer Workstation, a computer designed by Atari UK. It used Inmos T800 transputers, a kind of parallell processors. You could add more processors in package of four called a farm. The operating system was Occam. When connected to a transputer network the load was distributed to idle processors with in the network.