Interview with Dick Ainsworth (April 18, 2009 - April 21, 2009) By Paul Thacker I recently took care of one of my to-do's and contacted Dick Ainsworth to ask a few questions. He'd made a couple of posts to the [Bally Alley discussion] group in 2002, which are reprinted on Bally Alley: http://www.ballyalley.com/ballyalley/interviews/dick_ainsworth.txt I was particularly interested in more information about the Astrology cart he'd worked on, however. I got some great details on that, along with further comments on Bingo Math, the BASIC Sampler tape, and the general view of the system by the Bally management. With Dick's permission, I'm sending some of these on to the group. I'll also point him this way in case he wants to participate in the discussion. I've formatted it as an interview, but it's basically unedited. Paul: "One topic I always find fascinating is unreleased games. You mentioned working on the planetarium program, which I take to be Astrology advertised in some flyers we have on-line. If you don't mind satisfying my curiosity, what were your goals with this program? How far along did it get, and why was it never released? Do any prototypes or documents about it still exist?" Dick: "I designed the planetarium program as a small-scale model of the Adler in Chicago. I hired a physics professor to work with me on developing the actual code that would drive the program. The original idea was to project the Zodiac as a cylinder, which would fill the screen and move left or right, with the planets in the correct position for a real-time display of their actual position, or an for accurate view for any date. This simplistic view would be accurate enough to represent a current night sky for viewing, and also provide a model for understanding how the universe works. Unfortunately, the Bally folks wanted something that would tell fortunes "So people don't have to read that stuff in the newspaper". I went ahead with my design, since Bally had no idea what we were doing, but the project was never completed." Paul: "Thanks for the info. That helps explain why Astrology was advertised as being scientific/educational, along with the horoscope aspect. Is there any chance that code or ROM's for the unfinished program still exists somewhere? That would be quite a find." Dick: ""The planetarium project never made it into final code, though the preliminary equations worked fine. None of this remains." Paul: "We've actually done a lot of work recently in archiving software and documents. We've even got a dump of Color BASIC, now. Have you held onto anything from that period?" Dick: "I have the listings for the original Bally BASIC software which came with the audio tape interface. These are all programs I wrote. [This has been archived.] When I was recording this software for duplication on audio tape cassette, I met Bill Gates who was also at the same GRT studio, making a cassette of his BASIC. As far as I know, it's a tossup as to which of these programs was the first production software for the personal computer. If anyone has a VisualBASIC version of the original BallyBASIC, I would be delighted to know about it. I would like to release my original BallyBASIC course, etc. in its original format, using VB to recreate the really cool Bally BOX, LINE, PLAY, etc.. See my computer seminar (in QuickBASIC) for a general idea. It's on my personal page at www.qwerty.com. I still think that a version of this language that could run on a modern Windows system would be great fun." Paul: "I do recognize some of the programs in your seminar, like Newtona 500. I don't think anyone's tried a VisualBASIC implementation of Bally BASIC, however, though that would be cool to see. There is a program called MESS that will emulate the system, and therefore run Bally BASIC on a modern PC, but unfortunately it doesn't have tape loading support yet." Paul: "Also, have you kept in touch with any of the other people at Bally? There are many people we'd love to hear from." Dick: "Tom DeFanti who was an early player and developed a version of his ZGRASS language for the Astrocade is still a good friend. We are currently collaborating on several projects. Jay Fenton (now Jamie Fae Fenton) created the actual BallyBASIC language. I haven't contacted Jay/Jamie in several years." Paul: "I recognize Tom DeFanti's name. The expansion unit intended to run ZGRASS is sort of a holy grail among the Astrocade community. It was never released, but supposedly some prototype units got out there. I've never seen one, though. I think Adam Trionfo, who runs the Bally Alley site, talked to Tom at some point, but I can ask if anyone has any questions for him." Dick: "At one time, Tom DeFanti and I shared a house in Oak Park, a suburb of Chicago. At various times this house was also home to Jay Fenton, Larry Cuba (who created the first StarWars trench simulation on Tom's massive ZGRASS system at U of I), Ted Nelson, and others. It's too bad that most of the "computer revolution" is thought of in terms of the west coast, when quite a bit of interesting development was going on in the midwest as well. Bally is a strange contributor to the entire process of making computers available to people -- as opposed to governments, corporations, and universities. Bally was the world's expert at extracting quarters from adults via slot machines. When video games hit as coin-op systems, Bally/Midway became equally expert in extracting quarters from children. They saw the Bally Arcade as simply a way of extracting lots of quarters all at once. Bally never understood what computers were -- or the potential impact of actually owning one. They refused to use the word "computer" in any of their advertising for the arcade because they thought it was too complicated. They commissioned me to "create something that made it (the Arcade) look like it's educational" Bingo Math was actually a revolution in program design -- the first educational software ever sold -- the first "user modeling" system -- the first program to use interval timing, etc. These innovations led directly to my creation of the first Typing Tutor, sold by Microsoft , IBM, etc. Had Bally gone ahead with the first (and quite simply the best) computer system of it's time, using Tom's language, it could have been the computer that changed everything. Instead, Bally decided to open another casino in Atlantic City. And the rest is (or actually isn't) history." Paul: "Yes, one of the things I keep hearing from people is that the system was consistently mismanaged, by both Bally and Astrocade Inc." Dick: "I don't think Bally mismanaged the arcade, etc. They never intended to make a "personal computer" at all. They wanted to combine the best of the coin- op games in a box they could sell. Which they did. So they can't be faulted for not realizing the potential of a much greater opportunity. At that time, the very idea of a personal computer sounded totally weird to anybody outside of the small group of folks who where actually involved in making the personal computer revolution happen. I tried to explain to Bally the potential of what they had. I even went before the Bally board of directors with an extensive presentation, showing that the ultimate game is learning to CREATE games. I talked a lot about the incredible potential for people actually using the expanded Bally system for much more than a game box. The Bally execs listened patiently, but ultimately decided to stick with things that they knew about. Their next major move was to drop the computer idea and build a new casino in Atlantic City." End of Interview