Al Alcorn grew up in San Francisco, went to Berkeley, and later was at the video pioneering company, Ampex. There, he met Nolan Bushnell and several other people that would end up being constants through the Atari / Apple / Grass Valley / Pizza Time Theater set of companies.

Alcorn was the original designer of Pong, creating it at the direction of Nolan Bushnell. Bushnell selected a simple ping-pong game as a simple place to test feasibility, and all were pleasantly surprised how fun it was. The rest is history.

Alcorn went on to be an Atari founder with Bushnell.

In addition to direct involvement with all the breakout Atari products, such as the Atari 2600, Alcorn was involved at some of the historic meetings of Steve Wozniak (at that time an Atari employee) and Steve Jobs presenting their Apple I prototype.

After Warner bought Atari, Alcorn consulted to many fledging companies in Silicon Valley, especially involved in the startups of Catalyst Technologies Venture Capital , one of the first incubators, created by Nolan Bushnell and other ex-Atari leaders.

Alcorn was involved in several of the startups directly, including Cumma , a re-programmable video game cartridge/kiosk system, and an advisor to Etak , one of the first practical, in-car navigation systems.

Alcorn later became an Apple Fellow , and led and consulted to a variety of startups during the tech boom.