Pac-Man, his creator said, was dreamed up at lunch while looking at a pizza with a slice missing.
Toru Iwatani later added that he also rounded off the Japanese character for 'mouth', 口.
More amazing facts
- 1977 Star Wars came out in May 1977, and in September France carried out its last execution by guillotine.
- 1977 · 2012 'Johnny B. Goode' is now travelling through interstellar space: on 25 August 2012 Voyager 1, carrying its Golden Record, became the first human-made craft to enter interstellar space.
- 1977 · 1980 The last person to catch smallpox naturally was a hospital cook in Somalia.
- 1977 The most famous 'alien' signal is named after a margin note.
- 1981 Bill Gates says he never claimed '640K ought to be enough for anybody'. The line has been pinned on him since 1981, but he has called it made up, and there is no record of it.
- 1982 · 1983 In 1982 ten-year-old American Samantha Smith wrote to Yuri Andropov asking if he wanted war. Pravda printed her letter; he replied and invited her to the Artek camp, where in 1983 she turned down special lodgings to stay with Soviet children.