Ron Gordon

Ron Gordon was an American entrepreneur and former president of Atari.

Education

Ronald F. Gordon received his degree in Philosophy at the University of Colorado. During a talk he once gave at Stanford University one of the students asked where Gordon received his Engineering degree. He replied "Well I don’t have an engineering degree." The student asked, "How could you have invented and developed all of those products?" Gordon explained, "I think engineering is important and we must have engineers but that new products come from new ideas and new ideas come from one’s philosophy and not from engineering laws which often define what you cannot do instead of what you can do."[1]

Atari

In the mid-1970s, Ron Gordon took charge as president of Atari.

Atari founder Nolan Bushnell and engineer Allan Alcorn have reported how Gordon was hired initially as a consultant to help Atari develop in overseas markets,[2][3] occupying the role of International Marketing Director.[4] Later he was hired to stop cash attrition and repair the company's credit.[2]

Friends Amis, Inc.

In 1978 Gordon incorporated Friends Amis, Inc. and patented a multi-language electronic translator called the Ami LANGUAGE System.[5][6] The design of this translator was based on an 8-bit Mostek 3870 microcontroller with 2K of internal program memory and user-swappable language modules. The system of device and swappable modules was sold in the USA by California-based electronics manufacturer Craig, while Friends Amis produced the internals of the device and did the final assembly.[7] The translator was marketed as a 'Translator & Information Center' and in other countries rebranded versions were available, such as the 'Philips HL 3695 vertaal-machine' (The Netherlands) and 'MBO Pocket-Computer' (Germany).[8] Gordon suggested that close to 300.000 Mostek microcontrollers were bought to produce the translators.[9]

TeleLearning

In September 1982, Gordon came back from his third retirement and founded San Francisco–based TeleLearning Systems, Inc., launching The Electronic University Network.[15][16] He developed the technical and business concept and convinced colleges and universities to join the system. One of the lesser known, John F. Kennedy University, became the first accredited institution to offer an entire degree program, an MBA, online.[17]

MindDrive

Alongside his commercial ventures, Gordon has also operated his non-profit institute, The Other 90%. "I’ve always been fascinated by the brain and learning how to use the other 90 percent of our brain so we finally decided we’re going to get this." (Note: this is a well-known fallacy.) One of the products to come out of this research was the MindDrive, an interface technology to control devices, computers, games, wheelchairs, etc. with just one's thoughts.[1][18][19][20]