David Judd Nutting (December 26, 1930 – September 23, 2020) was an industrial design engineer who played a role in the early video game industry. He also designed the exterior of the Jeep Wagoneer.

David Judd Nutting was born in 1930 to parents Harold Judd Nutting and Margaret P. Peet in River Forest, Illinois. He was the youngest of four brothers, including the second oldest brother William Gilbert "Bill" Nutting. David came to be interested in engineering, disassembling and reassembling household items to understand how they worked. Despite pressure from his father to become a department store salesman, David joined the Army Corps of Engineers and intended to follow a career path in engineering.

After a year studying at Denison University, Nutting learned about the discipline of industrial design. He switched colleges to the Pratt Institute in their industrial design program, then rejoined the Army Corps of Engineers. Thereafter, he joined prestigious industrial design firm Brook Stevens Associates in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. He worked to design the physical shape of many different items for clients including 3M, Studebaker, cookware for Mirro, tractors for Bolens, and Evinrude Outboard Motors. He also designed one of the first computer-controlled interfaces for milling machines.

In 1961, Brooks Stevens Associates received a contract from Willys to design an update on the concept of the station wagon. Though the initial design parameters called for Detroit automotive style exteriors, Nutting worked on his own time to create a design based on the legacy of the Jeep automobile. His design was subsequently chosen for what was called the Jeep Wagoneer, thereafter inaugurating the category of sport utility vehicles (SUVs).

David became involved with the coin-operated games industry after his brother, Bill Nutting, started as an agent for the Knowledge Computer (1963) electro-mechanical quiz game. The device needed redesigning, so David and his friend Harold Montgomery who worked at engineering firm Cutler-Hammer created a new version of the machine. After a falling out between the brothers, David and Harold decided to form their own company, Nutting Industries, in Milwaukee to distribute their device. They launched their machine I.Q. Computer (1967) to the coin-op industry in 1967, competing with Nutting Associates’ Computer Quiz (1966).

David continued to design the games produced by Nutting Industries, initially different styles of quiz games. Nutting Industries opened a subsidiary called Modec to expand into the teaching machine market outside of the coin-op industry, which wound up as a financial disappointment. Nutting and Montgomery convened to create a traditional electro-mechanical shooting game called Red Baron (1971), which was the final game released by Nutting Industries.

Nutting Industries entered receivership, but David purchased the company’s assets with his personal finances. He formed a new company in 1971 called Milwaukee Coin Industries Inc. (MCI) with partner David Winter, dedicated to producing electro-mechanical games starting with Red Baron. The company did well in the business of arcade games and recruited engineers from the Milwaukee area to help implement David’s game ideas.

In 1972, former Air Force engineer Jeffery Frederiksen began working with MCI as a contractor. Trained in solid-state electronics and computer engineering, Frederiksen was recognized by David Nutting for his technical skill. Nutting increasingly wanted to explore the benefits of solid-state electronics and the two of them collaborated on a game called The Safe (1974) which utilized integrated circuits for the game logic.