Look up nolan in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.

Nolan is a surname, of Irish origin from Ó Nualláin [1], with alternate spellings including Nolen, Noland, Nolin, and Nalon, and may refer to:

People[link]

Surname[link]

• Albert Nolan (born 1934), South African Roman Catholic theologian
• Anna Nolan (born 1970), Irish television presenter
• Anthony Nolan (1972-1979), for whom the Anthony Nolan UK charity was formed
• Barry Nolan, American television presenter
• Bernadette Nolan (born 1960), Irish entertainer and actress
• Bob Nolan (1908-1980), Canadian singer-songwriter and actor
• Brandon Nolan (born 1983), retired NHL ice hockey player
• Brian Nolan (1932-2006), Canadian journalist and author
• Catherine Nolan, American politician
• Chris Sean Nolan American film director, writer, songwriter, author
• Christopher Nolan (author) (born 1965), Irish poet
• Christopher Nolan (born 1970), film director
• Clive Nolan, British musician and producer
• Coleen Nolan (born 1965), English television presenter
• David Nolan (author) (born 1946), American non-fiction writer
• David Nolan (Libertarian Party), American politician, founder of the Libertarian Party
• Deanna Nolan (born 1979), American basketball player
• Dennis E. Nolan (1872-1956), U.S. Army general
• Dick Nolan (football) (born 1932), American football player & coach
• Dick Nolan (musician) (1939-2005), Canadian musician
• Eddie Nolan (born 1988), Irish footballer
• Faith Nolan (born 1957), Canadian musician and social activist
• Francis Nolan, British phonetician
• Frederick Nolan (born 1931), British editor and writer
• Gary Nolan (baseball player) (born 1948), American baseball player
• Gary Nolan (radio host) (born 1954), American politician and radio host
• Graham Nolan, comic book artist
• Henry Grattan Nolan (1893-1957), Canadian lawyer
• Jeanette Nolan (1911-1998), American actress
• Jerry Nolan (1946-1992), American drummer
• Joe Nolan (born 1951), American baseball player
• John Nolan (musician) (born 1978), American singer and musician
• John Gavin Nolan, American Roman Catholic bishop
• John Philip Nolan (1838-1912), Irish landowner and politician
• Jonathan Nolan (born 1976), British screenwriter
• Jordan Nolan (ice hockey) (born 1989), Canadian professional ice hockey player
• Joseph A. Nolan, Philippine–American War Medal of Honor recipient
• Joseph Nolan Irish politician
• Kevin Nolan (born 1982), English footballer of Irish and Dutch descent
• Leo Nolan (born 1972), American boxer
• Lloyd Nolan (1902-1985), American actor
• Louis Edward Nolan (1818-1854), Canadian-British soldier
• M. J. Nolan (born 1951), Irish politician
• Mae Nolan (1886-1973), American politician
• Martin Nolan, American journalist
• Mary Nolan (1905-1948), American actress
• Michael N. Nolan, Irish-American politician
• Michael Nolan, Baron Nolan, British judge
• Mike Nolan (born 1954), Irish singer
• Mike Nolan (born 1959), American football player & coach
• Mike Nolan, principal of Middle Park State School
• Monica Nolan (1913-1995), American tennis player
• Nicholas M. Nolan (1835-1883) US Soldier during the American Civil War & Indian Wars
• Norma Nolan (born c.1943), Argentinian beauty queen
• Owen Nolan (born 1972), Canadian ice hockey player
• Pat Nolan, Canadian hockey player
• Pat Nolan (born 1950), American lawyer, politician & activist
• Patrick Nolan (1881–1941), Canadian politician
• Philip Nolan (1771-1801), Irish-American confidence trickster
• Richard Nolan (born 1943), American politician
• Seán Nolan, Irish Sinn Féin politician
• Sidney Nolan (1917-1992), Australian painter
• Stephen Nolan (born 1973), Northern Irish radio and television presenter
• Ted Nolan (born 1958), Canadian ice hockey player and coach
• Tom Nolan (1921-1992), Irish politician
• William F. Nolan (born 1928), American novelist
• William I. Nolan (1874-1943), American politician

Given name[link]

• Nolan Bushnell (born 1943), American engineer and entrepreneur who founded Atari, Inc and the Chuck E. Cheese's Pizza-Time Theaters
• Nolan Carroll (born 1987), National Football League (NFL) player
• Nolan Cromwell (born 1955), football coach and former NFL player
• Nolan Miller (born 1935), American fashion designer
• Nolan Miller (author) (1907-2006)
• Nolan North (born 1970), American voice actor.
• Nolan Reimold (born 1983), Major League Baseball player
• Nolan Richardson (born 1941), American basketball coach
• Nolan Roux (born 1988), French footballer
• Nolan Ryan (born 1947), Hall of Fame Major League Baseball pitcher
• Nolan Smith (born 1988), American basketball player

Fictional characters[link]

• Bruce Nolan, from the film Bruce Almighty
• Philip Nolan, main character of the short story "The Man Without a Country"
• Nolan Heinberg, the secret identity of the fictional character Omni-Man
• Lynsey Nolan, character in UK TV series Hollyoaks

Places[link]

Canada

• Nolans Corners, Ontario

United States

• Nolan, Texas
• Nolan County, Texas

See also[link]

• Colby Nolan, a housecat who was awarded an MBA degree in 2004 by Trinity Southern University, a Texas-based diploma mill
• Nolan Helmets, an Italian helmet manufacturer
• The Nolans, an Irish all-female band
• The Nolan Chart, a political diagram popularized by Libertarian David Nolan

External links[link]

• Ted Nolan Foundation (with information on the Nolan surname)
• Nolan DNA Project (with information on the Nolan surname)

This disambiguation page lists articles associated with the same title. If an internal link led you here, you may wish to change the link to point directly to the intended article.

Nolan Gould
Gould at the World of Color premiere at the Disney California Adventure Park in June 2010.
Born	Nolan Gould (1998-10-28) October 28, 1998 (age 13) Alabama, U.S.
Occupation	Actor
Years active	2006–present

Nolan Gould (born October 28, 1998) is an American child actor best known for his starring role as Luke Dunphy on the ABC comedy Modern Family. He is the brother of Aidan Gould.

Acting career[link]

Gould began his career at the age of three doing commercials.^[1] Nolan Gould's most recent films include leads in the features Ghoul (based on the novel by Brian Keene) and Space Buddies.^[1] Current television credits for Nolan Gould include Eleventh Hour and the movie of the week, "Sweet Nothing in My Ear."^[1] He is also a star of the popular TV show Modern Family, in which he has won a Screen Actors Guild Award for Best ensemble in a Comedy Series along with the rest of the show's cast.

Gould has trained with Patrick Malone and Lisa Picotte for years, focusing on scene study, cold reading and improv.^[1] During 2009, Gould appeared in commercials for The Hartford.

Personal life[link]

Gould is a member of Mensa.^[1]He has an IQ of 150. He plays the double bass and was recently given a banjo by Ellen DeGeneres on her talk show.^[2]

Filmography[link]

Films[link]

Television[link]

References[link]

External links[link]

• Nolan Gould at the Internet Movie Database

The Five
Mily Balakirev César Cui Modest Mussorgsky Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov Alexander Borodin
v t e

The Five, also known as The Mighty Handful, The Mighty Five, or The Mighty Coterie (Russian: Могучая кучка, Moguchaya kuchka), refers to a circle of composers who met in Saint Petersburg, Russia, in the years 1856–1870: Mily Balakirev (the leader), César Cui, Modest Mussorgsky, Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov and Alexander Borodin. The group had the aim of producing a specifically Russian kind of art music, rather than one that imitated older European music or relied on European-style conservatory training. In a sense, they were a branch of the Romantic Nationalist movement in Russia, sharing similar artistic goals with the Abramtsevo Colony and Russian Revival.

History[link]

Name[link]

Vladimir Stasov
(1824–1906)

In May 1867 the critic Vladimir Stasov wrote an article, Mr. Balakirev's Slavic Concert, on a concert given for visiting Slav delegations to the "All-Russian Ethnographical Exhibition" in Moscow. The four Russian composers whose works were played at the concert were Mikhail Glinka, Alexander Dargomyzhsky, Mily Balakirev, and Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov.^[1] The article ended with the following statement:

God grant that our Slav guests may never forget today's concert; God grant that they may forever preserve the memory of how much poetry, feeling, talent, and intelligence are possessed by the small but already mighty handful of Russian musicians.^[2]

—Vladimir Stasov, Sankt-Peterburgskie Vedomosti, 1867

The expression "mighty handful" (Russian: Могучая кучка, Moguchaya kuchka, "Mighty Bunch" or "Group"), was mocked by enemies of Balakirev and Stasov: Aleksandr Serov, academic circles of the conservatory, the Russian Musical Society, and their press supporters. The group responded by defiantly adopting the name.^[2] This loose collection of composers gathered around Balakirev now included Cui, Mussorgsky, Rimsky-Korsakov, and Borodin — the five who have come to be associated with the name "Mighty Handful", or sometimes "The Five". Gerald Abraham stated flatly in the Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians that "they never called themselves, nor were they ever called in Russia, 'The Five'"^[3] (although today the Russian equivalent "Пятерка" ("Pyatyorka") is occasionally used to refer to this group).^[4] In his memoirs, Rimsky-Korsakov routinely refers to the group as "Balakirev's circle", and occasionally uses "The Mighty Handful", usually with an ironic tone. He also makes the following reference to "The Five":

If we leave out of account Lodyzhensky, who accomplished nothing, and Lyadov, who appeared later, Balakirev's circle consisted of Balakirev, Cui, Mussorgsky, Borodin, and me (the French have retained the denomination of "Les Cinq" for us to this day).^[5]

—Nikolay Rimsky-Korsakov, Chronicle of My Musical Life, 1909

The Russian word kuchka also spawned the terms "kuchkism" and "kuchkist", which may be applied to artistic aims or works in tune with the sensibilities of The Mighty Handful.

The name of Les Six, an even looser collection of French-speaking composers, emulates that of "The Five".

Formation[link]

The formation of the group began in 1856, with the first meeting of Balakirev and César Cui. Modest Mussorgsky joined them in 1857, Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov in 1861, and Alexander Borodin in 1862. All the composers in The Five were young men in 1862. Balakirev was 25, Cui 27, Mussorgsky 23, Borodin the eldest at 28, and Rimsky-Korsakov just 18. They were all self-trained amateurs. Borodin combined composing with a career in chemistry. Rimsky-Korsakov was a naval officer (he wrote his First Symphony on a three-year naval voyage circumnavigating the globe). Mussorgsky had been in the Guards, then in the civil service before taking up music; even at the height of his career in the 1870s he was forced by the expense of his drinking habit to hold down a full-time job in the State Forestry Department.^[6]

In contrast to the élite status and court connections of Conservatory composers such as Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, The Five were mainly from the minor gentry of the provinces. To some degree their esprit de corps depended on the myth, which they themselves created, of a movement that was more "authentically Russian," in the sense that it was closer to the native soil, than the classic academy.^[7]

Before them, Mikhail Glinka and Alexander Dargomyzhsky had gone some way towards producing a distinctly Russian kind of music, writing operas on Russian subjects, but The Mighty Handful represented the first concentrated attempt to develop such a music, with Stasov as their artistic adviser and Dargomyzhsky as an elder statesman to the group, so to speak. The circle began to fall apart during the 1870s, no doubt partially due to the fact that Balakirev withdrew from musical life early in the decade for a period of time. All of "The Five" are buried in Tikhvin Cemetery in Saint Petersburg.

Musical language[link]

Stylization[link]

The musical language The Five developed set them far apart from the Conservatoire. This self-conscious Russian styling was based on two elements:

• They tried to incorporate in their music what they heard in village songs, in Cossack and Caucasian dances, in church chants and the tolling of church bells (to the point where the bell tolling became a cliché). The Five's music became filled with imitative sounds of Russian life. They also tried to reproduce the long-drawn, lyrical and melismatic peasant song, what Glinka had once called "the soul of Russian music." Balakirev made this possible by his study of songs from the Volga in the 1860s. More than any previous anthology, his transcriptions artfully preserved the distinctive aspects of Russian folk music:
  • Tonal mutability

  A tune seems to shift naturally from one tonal center to another, often ending up in a different key than the one in which the song began. This can produce a feeling of elusiveness, a lack of definition or of logical progression in the harmony. Even when stylized by The Five, this quality can make Russian music sound very different from the tonal structures of the West.

  • Heterophony

  A melody is simultaneously rendered by two or more performers in different variations. This is improvised by the singers until the end, when the song reverts to a single melodic line.

  • Parallel fifths, fourths and thirds

  The effect lends Russian music a raw sonority missing entirely from the comparatively polished harmonies of Western music.

• The Five also adopted a series of harmonic devices to create a distinct "Russian" style and color different from Western music. This "exotic" styling of "Russia" was not just self-conscious but entirely invented. None of these devices was actually used in Russian folk or church music:
  • Whole tone scale

  Although Glinka did not invent this scale, his application of it in the opera Ruslan and Lyudmila (1842) — most recognizable at the end of the festive overture — provided a characteristic harmonic and melodic device. This scale in "Russian" works often suggests evil or ominous personages or situations. It was used by all the major composers from Tchaikovsky (the appearance of the Countess's ghost in The Queen of Spades) to Rimsky-Korsakov (in all his magic-story operas—Sadko, Kashchey the Deathless and The Invisible City of Kitezh). Claude Debussy also uses this scale in his music, taking this, among many things, from the Russians. Later it became a standard device in horror-movie scores.

  • The Russian submediant^[8]

  Also linked to Glinka's Ruslan, this is a harmonic pattern (in major mode) in which one upper part proceeds from the dominant pitch chromatically to the submediant while the other harmony parts remain constant. The most basic form of this pattern can be shown as follows (beginning with typical tonic): root-position tonic triad --> root-position augmented tonic triad -> 1st inversion submediant minor triad. A famous example of the Russian submediant occurs in the very opening bars of the third movement of Rimsky-Korsakov's Scheherezade.

  • Diminished or octatonic scale

  Rimsky-Korsakov first used this in his symphonic poem Sadko in 1867. This scale became a sort of Russian calling-card — a leitmotif of magic and menace used not just by Rimsky-Korsakov but all of his followers, above all Alexander Scriabin, Maurice Ravel, Igor Stravinsky and Olivier Messiaen (mode 2).

  • Modular rotation in sequences of thirds

  The Five made this device of Franz Liszt their own to base a loose symphonic-poem type of structure. This way, they could avoid the rigid Western laws of modulation in sonata form, allowing the form of a musical composition to be shaped entirely by the "content" of the music (its programmatic statements and visual descriptions) rather than by formal laws of symmetry. This loose structure became especially important for Mussorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition, a work that may have done more than any other to define the Russian style.^[9]

  • Pentatonic scale

  This stylistic aspect became used by every Russian nationalist composer.^[10] Its distinctive feature is to have only five notes in the octave, rather than the seven of the heptatonic scales (e.g., major and minor). The pentatonic scale is one of the ways of suggesting a "primitive" folk-melodic style as well as the "Eastern" element (Middle East, Asia). A melodic example of the "major-mode" pentatonic scale (C-D-E-G-A) can be heard at the entrance of the chorus at the beginning of Borodin's Prince Igor.

Orientalism[link]

One hallmark of "The Five" was its reliance on orientalism.^[10] Many quintessentially "Russian" works were composed in orientalist style, such as Balakirev's Islamey, Borodin's Prince Igor and Rimsky-Korsakov's Scheherazade.^[10] Orientalism, in fact, became widely considered in the West both one of the best-known aspects of Russian music and a trait of Russian national character.^[11] As leader of "The Five," Balakirev encouraged the use of eastern themes and harmonies to set their "Russian" music apart from the German symphonism of Anton Rubinstein and other Western-oriented composers.^[10] Because Rimsky-Korsakov used Russian folk and oriental melodies in his First Symphony, Stasov and the other nationalists dubbed it the "First Russian Symphony," even though Rubinstein had written his Ocean Symphony a dozen years before it.^[10] These were themes Balakirev had transcribed in the Caucasus.^[10] "The symphony is good," Cui wrote to Rimsky-Korsakov in 1863, while the latter was out on naval deployment. "We played it a few days ago at Balakirev's—to the great pleasure of Stassov. It is really Russian. Only a Russian could have composed it, because it lacks the slightest trace of any stagnant Germanness."^[12]

Orientalism was not confined to using authentic Eastern melodies.^[13] What became more important than the melodies themselves were the musical conventions added to them.^[13] These conventions allowed orientalism to become an avenue for writing music on subjects considered unmentionable otherwise, such as political themes and erotic fantasies.^[11] It also became a means of expressing Russian supremacy as the empire expanded under Alexander II.^[11] This was often reinforced through misogynist symbolism—the rational, active and moral Western man versus the irrational, passive and immoral Eastern woman.^[11]

Two major works entirely dominated by orientalism are Rimsky-Korsakov's symphonic suite Antar and Balakirev's symphonic poem Tamara.^[13] Antar, set in Arabia, uses two different styles of music, Western (Russian) and Eastern (Arabian).^[13] The first theme, Antar's, is masculine and Russian in character.^[13] The second theme, feminine and oriental in melodic contour, belongs to the queen, Gul Nazar.^[13] Rimsky-Korsakov was able to soften the implicit misogyny to some extent.^[13] However, female sensuality does exert a paralyzing, ultimately destructive influence.^[13] With Gul Nazar extinguishing Antar's life in a final embrace, the woman overcomes the man.^[13]

Balakirev gives a more overtly misogynistic view of oriental women in Tamara.^[13] He had originally planned to write a Caucasan dance called a lezginka, modeled on Glinka, for this work.^[14] However, he discovered a poem by Mikhail Lermontov about the beautiful Tamara, who lived in a tower alongside the gorge of Daryal.^[14] She lured travelers and allowed them to enjoy a night of sensual delights, only to kill them and throw their bodies into the River Terek.^[14] Balakirev uses two specific codes endemic to orientalism in writing Tamara. The first code, based on obsessive rhythms, note repetitions, climactic effects and accelerated tempi, represents Dionysian intoxication.^[13] The second code, consisting of unpredictable rhythms, irregular phrasing and based on long passages with many repeat notes, augmented and diminished intervals and extended melismas, depict sensual longing.^[13] Not only did Balakirev use these codes extensively, but he also attempted to supercharge them further when he revised the orchestration of Tamara in 1898.^[14]

A direct result of such orientalism was the big influence that this circle left on the formation of classical traditions in other nations of the east and south of Russia. For instance, one of Rimsky-Korsakov's famous students, Alexander Spendiaryan went on to become the founder of Armenian classical music, carrying on the traditions and aesthetics of the Mighty Handful to the Caucasus.

Quotations[link]

Rimsky-Korsakov provides the following picture of "The Mighty Handful" in his memoirs, Chronicle of My Musical Life (translated by J. A. Joffe):

Tastes[link]

"The tastes of the circle leaned towards Glinka, Schumann, and Beethoven's last quartets ... they had little respect for Mendelssohn ... Mozart and Haydn were considered out of date and naive ... J. S. Bach was held to be petrified ... Chopin was likened by Balakirev to a nervous society lady ... Berlioz was highly esteemed ...Liszt was comparatively unknown ... Little was said of Wagner ... They respected Dargomyzhsky for the recitative portions of Rusalka ... [but] he was not credited with any considerable talent and was treated with a shade of derision. ...Rubinstein had a reputation as a pianist, but was thought to have neither talent nor taste as a composer."

Balakirev[link]

"Balakirev, who had never had any systematic course in harmony and counterpoint and had not even superficially applied himself to them, evidently thought such studies quite unnecessary ... An excellent pianist, a superior sight reader of music, a splendid improviser, endowed by nature with the sense of correct harmony and part-writing, he possessed a technique partly native and partly acquired through a vast musical erudition, with the help of an extraordinary memory, keen and retentive, which means so much in steering a critical course in musical literature ... He instantly felt every technical imperfection or error, he grasped a defect in form at once. Whenever I or other young men, later on, played him our essays at composition, he instantly caught all the defects of form, modulation, and so on, and forthwith seating himself at the piano, he would improvise and show how the composition in question should be changed exactly as he indicated, and frequently entire passages in other people's compositions became his and not their putative authors' at all. He was obeyed absolutely, for the spell of his personality was tremendous. ... His influence over those around him was boundless, and resembled some magnetic or mesmeric force. ... he despotically demanded that the tastes of his pupils should exactly coincide with his own. The slightest deviation from his taste was severely censured by him. By means of raillery, a parody or caricature played by him, whatever did not suit him at the moment was belittled — and the pupil blushed with shame for his expressed opinion and recanted...."

Abilities[link]

"Balakirev considered me a symphony specialist ... in the sixties, Balakirev and Cui, though very intimate with Mussorgsky and sincerely fond of him, treated him like a lesser light, and of little promise at that, in spite of his undoubted talent. It seemed to them that there was something missing in him and, in their eyes, he was in need of advice and criticism. Balakirev often said that Mussorgsky had "no head" or that his "brains were weak." ... Balakirev thought that Cui understood little in symphony and musical forms and nothing in orchestration, but was a past master in vocal and operatic music; Cui, in turn, thought Balakirev a master in symphony, form, and orchestration, but with little liking for operatic composition and vocal music in general. Thus they complemented each other, but each, in his own way, felt mature and grown up. Borodin, Mussorgsky, and I, however — we were immature and juvenile. Obviously, towards Balakirev and Cui we were in somewhat subordinate relations; their opinions were listened to unconditionally...."

Influence[link]

Except perhaps for Cui, the members of this group influenced or taught many of the great Russian composers who were to follow, including Alexander Glazunov, Mikhail Ippolitov-Ivanov, Sergei Prokofiev, Igor Stravinsky, and Dmitri Shostakovich. They also influenced the two french symbolist composers Maurice Ravel and Claude Debussy through their radical tonal language.

Timeline[link]

<timeline> ImageSize = width:800 height:155 PlotArea = width:620 height:135 left:100 bottom:20 AlignBars = justify

Colors =

 id:Borodin            value:tan1
 id:Cui                value:rgb(1,0.6,0.5)
 id:Balakirev          value:lightorange
 id:Mussorgsky         value:gray(0.8)
 id:Rimsky-Korsakov    value:coral
 id:Tsar               value:white
   

Period = from:1830 till:1920 TimeAxis = orientation:horizontal ScaleMajor = unit:year increment:10 start:1830 ScaleMinor = unit:year increment:10 start:1830

Define $markred = text:"*" textcolor:red shift:(0,3) fontsize:10

PlotData=

 align:center textcolor:black fontsize:8 mark:(line,black) width:18 shift:(0,-5)

 bar:Tsar color:white text:""
 from: 1830 till: 1855 color: orange text: Nicholas I       
 from: 1855 till: 1881 color: yellow text: Alexander II
 from: 1881 till: 1894 color: orange text: Alexander III
 from: 1894 till: 1917 color: yellow text: Nicholas II
 bar:Borodin color:Borodin
 from: 1833 till: 1887  
 bar:Cui color:Cui
 from: 1835 till: 1918 
 bar:Balakirev color:Balakirev
 from: 1837 till: 1910  
 bar:Mussorgsky color:Mussorgsky
 from: 1839 till: 1881  
 bar:Rimsky-Korsakov color:Rimsky-Korsakov
 from: 1844 till: 1908  

LineData=

  at:1855 color:black width:0.5 layer:back
  at:1881 color:black width:0.5 layer:back
  at:1894 color:black width:0.5 layer:back
  at:1917 color:black width:0.5 layer:back

</timeline>

See also[link]

• List of Russian composers
• Tchaikovsky and the Five
• Les Six, French composers
• Armenian Mighty Handful
• Group of Eight (music), Spanish composers

References[link]

External links[link]

• Encyclopædia Britannica article about "The Five" [1]
• The Article about The Five in "1000 years of Russian Music" [2]
• Turgenev and Russian Music: The Mighty Handful (with music samples)
• Russian musical influences of The Five on works of Claude Debussy [3]

This biographical article needs additional citations for verification. Please help by adding reliable sources. Contentious material about living persons that is unsourced or poorly sourced must be removed immediately, especially if potentially libelous or harmful. (January 2012)

Nolan Sotillo (born October 2, 1994) is an American actor, singer-songwriter and athlete. Sotillo played Lucas on the 2011 film, Prom. He also starred in the Disney TV series Corey and Lucas For The Win He sings the song We Could Be Anything on Prom's 2011 soundtrack that gained more than 200,000 views. He also has a Twitter account wherein he has more than 18,000 followers.

Filmography[link]

External links[link]

• Nolan Sotillo at the Internet Movie Database

Nolan Bushnell
Born	(1943-02-05) February 5, 1943 (age 69) Clearfield, Utah
Citizenship	United States
Fields	Electrical Engineering entrepreneur
Institutions	Atari Chuck E. Cheese's
Alma mater	University of Utah
Known for	Pong
Notable awards	Video Game Hall of Fame Consumer Electronics Association Hall of Fame

Nolan Key Bushnell (born February 5, 1943) is an American engineer and entrepreneur who founded both Atari, Inc and the Chuck E. Cheese's Pizza-Time Theaters chain. Bushnell has been inducted into the Video Game Hall of Fame and the Consumer Electronics Association Hall of Fame, received the BAFTA Fellowship and the Nations Restaurant News “Innovator of the Year” award, and was named one of Newsweek's "50 Men Who Changed America." Bushnell has started more than twenty companies and is one of the founding fathers of the video game industry. He is currently the Co-Founder and Chief Game Designer of Anti-Aging Games, a website of games designed to stimulate the brain and created by Bushnell and two doctorate scientists.

Personal life[link]

Bushnell graduated from the University of Utah College of Engineering with a degree in electrical engineering in 1968 after transferring from Utah State University, and was a member of the Pi Kappa Alpha Fraternity. He was one of many computer science students of the 1960s who played the historic Spacewar! game on DEC mainframe computers. The University of Utah was heavily involved in computer graphics research and spawned a wide variety of Spacewar versions.

Bushnell worked at Lagoon Amusement Park for many years in high school and college while living in his hometown of Ogden, Utah. He was particularly interested in the midway arcade games, where theme park customers would have to use skill and luck to ultimately achieve the goal and win the prize. He liked the concept of getting people curious about the game and from there getting them to pay the fee in order to play. He would use his love for games and theme parks to help launch both Atari and Chuck E. Cheese's Pizza-Time Theaters.

After selling Atari to Warner Communications for $28 million, Bushnell purchased the former mansion of coffee magnate James Folger in Woodside, California, which he shared with his wife Nancy and their eight children. The Bushnells now live in Southern California.

Bushnell's oldest child, Alissa, currently works with him at uWink.

Bushnell was raised in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, but is no longer an active member.^[1] A 1999 Time article described him as a "lapsed Mormon"^[2] and described him smoking a pipe, which is frowned upon in the LDS community.

In June 2008 a new film was announced in which Leonardo DiCaprio would portray Bushnell.^[3]

At the British Academy Video Games Awards on March 10, 2009, the British Academy of Film and Television Arts awarded the Academy Fellowship to Bushnell in recognition of his outstanding achievement as a founding father of the video games industry.^[4]

Bushnell was featured in the documentary film Something Ventured which premiered in 2011.

Entrepreneurship[link]

Syzygy[link]

In 1971, Bushnell and colleague Ted Dabney formed Syzygy with the intention of producing a Spacewar clone known as Computer Space. The "counter slip" state machine technology that drove Computer Space was later patented^{[citation needed]} and served as the core technology for all arcade video games until 1975 when microprocessors appeared and soon became the technology of choice.

In order to keep the company alive while the machine was being prototyped, the two took on a route servicing broken pinball machines. Dabney built the prototype and Bushnell shopped it around, looking for a manufacturer. They made an agreement with Nutting Associates, a maker of coin-op trivia and shooting games, who produced a fiberglass cabinet for the unit that included a coin-slot mechanism.^{[5] [6] [7]}

Computer Space was a commercial failure, though sales exceeded $3 million. Bushnell felt that Nutting Associates had not marketed the game well, and decided that his next game would be licensed to a bigger manufacturer.

Atari, Inc.[link]

In 1972, Bushnell and Dabney set off on their own, and learned that the name "Syzygy" was in use; Bushnell has said at different times that it was in use by a candle company owned by a Mendocino hippie commune^{[8][9][10][11][12]} and by a roofing company.^[13] They instead incorporated under the name Atari, a reference to a check-like position in the game Go (which Bushnell has called his "favorite game of all time"^[14]). They rented their first office on Scott Boulevard in Sunnyvale, California, contracted with Bally Manufacturing to create a driving game, and hired their first employee, engineer Allan Alcorn. Bushnell later bought out Dabney, who was worried about the success of the video game market; Dabney took over the pinball servicing route instead.

After Bushnell attended a Burlingame, California demonstration of the Magnavox Odyssey, he gave the task of making the Magnavox tennis game into a coin-op version to Alcorn as a test project. Alcorn incorporated many of his own improvements into the game design, such as scoring and sound, and Pong was born. Pong proved to be very popular; Atari released a large number of Pong-based arcade games over the next few years as the mainstay of the company.

In 1974, Atari entered the consumer electronics market after engineers Harold Lee and Bob Brown approached Alcorn with an idea to develop a home version of Pong. With a marketing and distribution agreement with Sears, Pong sales soared when the unit was released in 1975.

Using borrowed parts from Atari, having the main PCB printed up by Atari employee Howard Cantin, and receiving further assistance from Atari employee Ron Wayne,^[15] two non-employees, Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak - both of whom had previously been involved in the development of the Atari arcade game Breakout - created and marketed their own home computer. They offered the design to Bushnell, but Atari had no desire to build computers at the time, instead focusing on the arcade and home console markets.

By 1976 Atari was in the midst of developing the Atari VCS (Video Computer System, later renamed the Atari 2600), but Bushnell realized that if the company was going to grow, it needed capital, and with the stock market in a bleak condition, going public would not be the solution. He made a list of companies to approach to buy Atari. Meanwhile, Steve Ross, CEO of Warner Communications, noticed that his children were hovering around video game cabinets at Walt Disney World. Warner Communications contacted Atari to discuss purchasing the company. For $28 million, Warner Communications (now Time Warner) bought Atari, bringing the capital they needed for the VCS launch, which took place in August 1977.

In November 1978, Bushnell was forced out of the company after a dispute with Warner over its future direction, notably on the lifespan of the Atari 2600 and their closed software strategy, which was later changed for the new home computer division.

By 1982, Atari had US$2 billion in annual sales and was the fastest-growing company in the history of American business.^[16] By 1984, the company had crashed and was split into three pieces to be sold off. The coin-op division became Atari Games. The Consumer division was sold to Jack Tramiel, who folded it into his Tramel Technology, Ltd., which was then renamed Atari Corporation. The budding Ataritel division was sold to Mitsubishi Electric.

Chuck E. Cheese's Pizza Time Theatre[link]

In 1977, while at Atari, Bushnell purchased Pizza Time Theatre from Warner Communications. It had been created by Bushnell, originally as a place where kids could go and eat pizza and play video games, which would therefore function as a distribution channel for Atari games. The Pizza Time Theatre / Chuck E. Cheese's also had animatronic animals that played music as entertainment. (Bushnell had always wanted to work for Walt Disney, but was continually turned down for employment when he was first starting out after graduation; Chuck E. Cheese's was his homage to Disney and the technology developed there.) In 1981 Bushnell turned over day-to-day food operations of Chuck E. Cheese’s to a newly hired restaurant executive and focused on Catalyst Technologies.

Through 1981 and 1982, Bushnell concentrated on subsidiaries Sente Technologies and Kadabrascope. Sente was a reentry into the coin-operated game business and Kadabrascope was an early attempt at computer assisted animation. In 1983 as the restaurants started to lose money. Sente, though profitable, was sold to Bally for $3.9 million and Kadabrascope was sold to Lucas which became the beginnings of what became Pixar.

During this time Bushnell was using large loans on his Pizza Time Stock to fund Catalyst. Bushnell also became more and more involved in sailing and campaigned "Charlie" to the first to finish trophy in the Transpac Yacht race from Newport to Honolulu

By the end of 1983, Chuck E. Cheese was having serious financial problems. President and long-time friend Joe Keenan resigned that fall. Nolan tried to step back in, blaming the money problems on over-expansion, too much tweaking of the formula and saturation in local markets by the management team. He resigned in February 1984, when the Board of Directors rejected his proposed changes. Chuck E. Cheese's Pizza Time Theaters (now named after its famous mouse mascot) entered bankruptcy in the fall of 1984.

ShowBiz Pizza, a competing Pizza/Arcade family restaurant, then purchased Chuck E. Cheese's Pizza Time Theatre and assumed its debt. The newly formed company, ShowBiz Pizza Time, operated restaurants under both brands for a period of time before unifying all locations under the Chuck E. Cheese's brand. Today over 500 locations of this restaurant are in business.

Catalyst Technologies Venture Capital Group[link]

Bushnell founded the Catalyst Technologies, one of the earliest business incubators. The Catalyst Group companies included Androbot, Etak, Cumma, and Axlon.

Axlon launched many consumer and consumer electronic products successfully, most notably AG Bear, a bear that mumbled/echoed a child's words back to him/her. In the late 1980s, Axlon managed the development of two new games for the Atari 2600, most likely as part of a marketing attempt to revive sales of the system, already more than a decade old. The company was largely sold to Hasbro.

Etak, founded in 1984, was the first company to digitize the maps of the world, as part of the first commercial automotive navigation system; the maps ultimately provided the backbone for Google maps, mapquest.com, and other navigation systems; it was sold to Rupert Murdoch in the 1980s. In May 2000 the company, headquartered in Menlo Park, California, became a wholly owned subsidiary of Tele Atlas.

PlayNet/Arista[link]

In the mid '90s Nolan Bushnell became senior consultant to the small game developer Play Net after it was bought under the name Arista. Play Net developed a touchscreen interface bar-top/arcade system that would also provide internet access, phone calls, and online networked tournaments. The company died shortly before the dot com bubble burst with its prototype machines still in development in 1997.

uWink[link]

Bushnell's most recent company is uWink, which has gone through several failed iterations including a touch-screen kiosk designer and an online Entertainment Systems network.^[17] After nearly 7 years and over $24 million in investor funding, the latest version (announced in 2005) is a new interactive entertainment restaurant called the uWink Media Bistro, whose concept builds off his Chuck E. Cheese venture and previous 1988–1989 venture Bots Inc., which developed similar systems of customer-side point-of-sale touch-screen terminals in addition to autonomous pizza-delivery robots for Little Caesar's Pizza. Guests order their food and drinks using screens at each table, on which they may also play games with each other and watch movie trailers and short videos. The first Bistro opened in Woodland Hills, California on October 16, 2006. A second in Hollywood was established, and in 2008 the company opened a third Southern California restaurant and one in Mountain View, California, in Silicon Valley.^[18] All the restaurants have since closed.

Atari, SA [link]

On April 19, 2010 Atari announced Nolan Bushnell along with Tim Virden would join the company's Board of Directors.^[19]

Anti-Aging Games, LLC[link]

Nolan is currently involved with Anti-AgingGames.com,^[20] featuring online memory, concentration, and focus games for healthy people over 35.^[20]

Other ventures[link]

In 1981, Bushnell created the TimberTech Computer Camp in Scotts Valley, California.

In 1984, Bushnell purchased the arcade game company Videa and renamed it Sente Games. Among the games developed by the company before its close in 1987 included the hockey video game Hat Trick.

In 1991, Bushnell endorsed the Commodore International CDTV, a CD-ROM-based version of the Amiga 500 computer repackaged for the consumer electronics market.

In 2005, he served as a judge on the USA Network reality series Made in the USA.

In 2007, Bushnell joined the board of NeoEdge Networks as Chairman.

In 2007, Bushnell joined the advisory board of GAMEWAGER.^[21]

In 2008, Bushnell became a member of the board of ME3 GLOBAL, LLC.^{[citation needed]}

In 2009, Bushnell announced his intention to move into the game-education market with a venture called snap. He also announced that he would make an appearance at SGC, a gaming convention organized by Screwattack.

References [link]

Further reading [link]

• Zap: The Rise and Fall of Atari, by Scott Cohen (1984) ISBN 0-7388-6883-3
• Gaming 101: A Contemporary History of PC and Video Games, by George Jones (2005) ISBN 1-55622-080-4
• The Ultimate History of Video Games: From Pong to Pokémon—The story Behind the Craze That Touched Our Lives and Changed the World, by Steven L. Kent (2001) ISBN 0-7615-3643-4
• High Score!: The Illustrated History of Electronic Games, by Rusel DeMaria, Johnny L. Wilson (2003) ISBN 0-07-223172-6
• The First Quarter, by Steven L. Kent

External links[link]

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Nolan Bushnell

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Nolan Bushnell

• Nolan Bushnell: A Life in Video Games, filmed BAFTA event
• San Jose Mercury News Podcast Interview with Bushnell
• Podcast Interview Nolan Bushnell on "We Talk Games." [Timecode, 00:38:05].
• The Dot Eaters entry on Bushnell and Atari
• An interview with Bushnell
• Discovery Channel Interview with Bushnell
• gigaom.com on Bushnell and NeoEdge Networks
• Nolan Bushnell Keynote Address at Game Based Learning 2009, London, March 2009
• An interview with Bushnell on The BusinessMakers Show
• quotes.nobosh.com Nolan Bushnell Quotes
• nobosh.com Nolan Bushnell News