Ralph Baer, the 'father of video games', dies at age 92

http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/dec/08/ralph-baer-father-of-video-games-dies

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It is rare that any creative industry can look at a single person and say with any confidence that they started it all. But perhaps that is possible with video game consoles, and perhaps that person is Ralph Baer, who has died at the age of 92.

Widely known as the “father of video games” Baer, a lifelong inventor and innovator, was instrumental in the design of the Magnavox Odyssey, the first ever commercial digital games console. With its futuristic looks, electronic game cards and strange analogue controller, it introduced consumers to the concept of interacting with games on their television sets. Released in the US in August 1972, it pre-dated Atari’s Pong arcade cabinet by several months.

Baer was born in Germany in 1922, but his Jewish family fled the country as Nazism took hold, eventually settling in the US. He trained in electronics and while working for defence contractor Sanders Associates he and two colleagues William Harrison and William Rusch, started work on a prototype console that could plug into a standard television. Originally known as “brown box” due to its rudimentary construction held together with packing tape, the device could run interactive games that were stored on printed circuit boards named “game cards”.

Originally conceived and constructed in 1966, the concept was licensed to electronics company Magnavox, which released its Odyssey console in 1972, complete with a selection of 12 game cards including Football and Table Tennis, which consisted of little more than onscreen blocks and balls. However, it was revelatory at the time, selling 100,000 units in its first year – a figure that may have been larger if more consumers had realised they wouldn’t need a Magnavox-branded television to run the games.

When the home console industry exploded in the mid-seventies, companies like Atari and later Mattel and Nintendo found that elements of basic console design had been patented by Magnovox, leading to a string of law suits, which the Odyssey manufacturer won. Baer was no doubt confident that his innovation would be recognised. An earlier visit to a patent examiner’s office to describe the device descended into one long gaming session. “I set up a small television set and my game console,” Mr. Baer once said. “Within 15 minutes, every examiner on the floor of that building was in that office wanting to play the game.”

Later, Baer created a “light gun” which would allow Odyssey users to shoot onscreen objects; the first use of the technology in home machines and one of the first instances of a video game peripheral sold separately from its orignal console. In 1978, he designed the handheld electronic game Simon, a version of the popular “simon says” game, requiring players to recall and repeat a lengthening series of coloured button flashes. It was a smash hit and variants are still sold today.

“By the mid-1970s, integrated circuits and single-chip game designs were coming into use, reducing the cost and increasing the performance of games so that the industry took off like a big bird,” wrote Baer later. “By some calculations, its gross receipts now exceed that of the movie industry.”

“Not too shabby for an idea that took off from a few notes scribbled in New York in August of 1966.”