Ramtek was founded in 1971 as a graphic display company for the aerospace and medical industries, but soon found itself making arcade machines following the success of Atari's Pong. Notable employee Pete Kauffmann actually played Atari's prototype pong machine, giving Ramtek an early lead in cloning the popular game. This head start along with some great games made Ramtek a successful gaming business, with it even creating the fake company "Volley" to help elude distributor exclusivity clauses. However, Ramtek was still a diverse business and their lack of enthusiasm for the gaming industry drove away many of its top employees such as Kauffmann and notable programmer Howell Ivy. Disaster would strike the company in 1977 as their warehouse caught fire, resulting in a loss of over 7 million dollars of un-insured property. They continued making games for awhile, but never committed strongly to digital games. Eventually they pulled out completely from the videogame market after losses on several games, focusing instead on their core business of graphical displays and medical equipment.