Masters of Doom: How Two Guys Created an Empire and Transformed Pop Culture

by David Kushner

Because the mainframes couldn’t save data, the programming had to be punched on waxy paper cards; each card represented a line of code—a typical game would take thousands. After every day at the school, Romero would wrap the stack of cards in bungee cord around the back of his bike and pedal home. When he’d return to the lab the next time, he’d have to feed the cards into the computer again to get the game to run.