Category Archives: Ralph Baer

Video Game Pioneer Ralph Baer Passes Away

When I started this site 16 years ago, when it came time to cover the Odyssey, the first home video game console, I was fortunate enough to get in contact with its creator, Ralph Baer. I had already written the Odyssey article when I started corresponding with him, and he was gracious enough to give me a lot of feedback on details of the revolutionary system’s development, as well as provide corrections to my research.  I remember being amazed how meticulous Mr. Baer was in his note keeping, and that such a historical figure would take the time to school me on the subject of how the first home video game system had been developed.  It was his precise and detailed reminisces, as well as his generosity of time, that propelled me forward in the early days of The Dot Eaters.

It is with a heavy heart, then, that I relay that Ralph Baer has passed away at the age of 92. I recently profiled Mr. Baer and his amazing invention in a post, so I will repost it here and just say farewell to the man who’s pioneering work set the stage for all the enjoyment video games have delivered over the years:

 

If you’re enjoying a current generation video game behemoth like the PS4 or Xbox One (or, yes, even the Wii U) in your home these days, you might be curious where home video games began, and the person who invented them. Well, let’s set the Wayback Machine to 1966, Sherman, and see how it all started [cue wavy lines]…

Born in Germany in 1922, Ralph Baer and his family escape amidst the growing Nazi tyranny and emigrate to the United States in 1938, when Baer is 16. Graduating from a correspondence course in radio repair, in 1939 – 40 he runs his own radio repair service in New York City. With the outbreak of the war in Europe, Baer serves three years in the US Army, from 1943 – 1946, the final two years overseas during WWII assigned to Military Intelligence. After leaving the army, via the G.I. Bill, in 1949 he graduates from the American Television Institute of Technology (ATIT) in Chicago with a B.S. in Television Engineering. In 1951 he is employed by U.S. defense contractor Loral Electronics Corporation, based out of New York City. Among other assignments at Loral, he is given the task to develop “the world’s best television receiver”, which would include so many technical advances that the public couldn’t help but want it, no matter what the price. It is during this project that his thoughts turn to the passive nature of television and how to tap into the market of 62 million homes already with TV sets, but his idea of working an interactive on-screen sports game into the design comes to naught as Loral brass decide the market wouldn’t bear the ultimate cost of their revolutionary projection TV. Having moved to New Hampshire based military contractor Sanders Associates by 1966, Baer continues to mull over his interactive television concept and one day while waiting for an associate at a New York City bus terminal he scratches down his concepts for a TV based videogame system, which he later transcribes into a 4 page paper. In this he outlines a low-cost device for attaching to a standard TV set, along with a list of game categories that would become staples in the industry, such as Action, Puzzle, Instructional and Sports.

Photo of The brown-box prototype

The brown-box prototype

 

By now the division manager of electronic design at Sanders, Baer has nearly 500 engineers and technicians at his disposal, along with the ability to authorize various projects dealing with electronics. He draws up a schematic based on his TV game design and begins developing the system on the side, and by late 1966 has breadboarded a symbol generator creating manually controlled spots of light that can chase each other around on a TV screen. With the help of fellow Sanders employees Bob Tremblay and Bob Solomon, Bear continues his work in a secret lab inside Sanders known as the “Game Room”, to which only his team has the key. By December of that year they are ready to demonstrate a system that uses the moving spots in a rudimentary game. By using two circuits known as Spot Generators, they create a simple electronic game of “tag” with two spots chasing each other, if one is caught by the other it is wiped out. In January of 1967 Baer puts technician Bill Harrison to work to build the first multi-game unit. It plays chase games, has a light gun and a variety of other games, including a version of hockey where both impact velocity and angle geometry of shots are replicated. Through its various numbered iterations, the game system is titled TV Game Unit. It is more commonly referred to in the lab as The Brown Box, due to the wood-grain adhesive vinyl applied around the chassis by Harrison in an attempt to make the whole thing more attractive as a consumer device. After demonstrating the system to Sander’s Corporate Director of Research and Development Herbert Campman, the project is approved and funds for further research are forwarded. Now working alongside Baer and Harrison is engineer Bill Rusch. Rusch designs a new game, and it is perhaps not surprising that it too harkens back to an archetypal playground activity, using three spot generators to produce two onscreen paddles along with a ball in a game of “catch”. Baer and Harrison further refine the play so that the ball can be served from off-screen when it has been missed by a player, creating a simple ping-pong game. 

After adding a light-gun and some other games, Baer’s Brown Box would be licensed exclusively by Magnavox and released in 1972 as the Odyssey, the world’s first home video game console. It sold 333,000 units up until its discontinuation in 1975, but that wasn’t where the real money was; possessing control of the first home video game patent, Magnavox was able to collect millions of dollars in licensing and lawsuit judgements from anyone attempting to enter the market after PONG became wildly successful.  That includes Nolan Bushnell and Atari, who created PONG.

For more information on the Odyssey, consult your local Dot Eaters entry. We’ll leave you with an amazing video of Ralph Baer demonstrating the Brown Box prototype at Sanders in 1969.

Click image to see early 70's footage of Baer demoing the TV Game Unit

Click image to see 1969 video footage of Baer demoing the TV Game Unit

 

R.I.P. to the father of video games, Ralph Baer.

Connecting the Dots: Where Did Home Video Games Start?

If you’re enjoying a current generation video game behemoth like the PS4 or Xbox One (or, yes, even the Wii U) in your home these days, you might be curious where home video games began, and the person who invented them. Well, let’s set the Wayback Machine to 1966, Sherman, and see how it all started [cue wavy lines]…

Born in Germany in 1922, Ralph Baer and his family escape amidst the growing Nazi tyranny and emigrate to the United States in 1938, when Baer is 16. Graduating from a correspondence course in radio repair, in 1939 – 40 he runs his own radio repair service in New York City. With the outbreak of the war in Europe, Baer serves three years in the US Army, from 1943 – 1946, the final two years overseas during WWII assigned to Military Intelligence. After leaving the army, via the G.I. Bill, in 1949 he graduates from the American Television Institute of Technology (ATIT) in Chicago with a B.S. in Television Engineering. In 1951 he is employed by U.S. defense contractor Loral Electronics Corporation, based out of New York City. Among other assignments at Loral, he is given the task to develop “the world’s best television receiver”, which would include so many technical advances that the public couldn’t help but want it, no matter what the price. It is during this project that his thoughts turn to the passive nature of television and how to tap into the market of 62 million homes already with TV sets, but his idea of working an interactive on-screen sports game into the design comes to naught as Loral brass decide the market wouldn’t bear the ultimate cost of their revolutionary projection TV. Having moved to New Hampshire based military contractor Sanders Associates by 1966, Baer continues to mull over his interactive television concept and one day while waiting for an associate at a New York City bus terminal he scratches down his concepts for a TV based videogame system, which he later transcribes into a 4 page paper. In this he outlines a low-cost device for attaching to a standard TV set, along with a list of game categories that would become staples in the industry, such as Action, Puzzle, Instructional and Sports.

Photo of The brown-box prototype

The brown-box prototype

By now the division manager of electronic design at Sanders, Baer has nearly 500 engineers and technicians at his disposal, along with the ability to authorize various projects dealing with electronics. He draws up a schematic based on his TV game design and begins developing the system on the side, and by late 1966 has breadboarded a symbol generator creating manually controlled spots of light that can chase each other around on a TV screen. With the help of fellow Sanders employees Bob Tremblay and Bob Solomon, Bear continues his work in a secret lab inside Sanders known as the “Game Room”, to which only his team has the key. By December of that year they are ready to demonstrate a system that uses the moving spots in a rudimentary game. By using two circuits known as Spot Generators, they create a simple electronic game of “tag” with two spots chasing each other, if one is caught by the other it is wiped out. In January of 1967 Baer puts technician Bill Harrison to work to build the first multi-game unit. It plays chase games, has a light gun and a variety of other games, including a version of hockey where both impact velocity and angle geometry of shots are replicated. Through its various numbered iterations, the game system is titled TV Game Unit. It is more commonly referred to in the lab as The Brown Box, due to the wood-grain adhesive vinyl applied around the chassis by Harrison in an attempt to make the whole thing more attractive as a consumer device. After demonstrating the system to Sander’s Corporate Director of Research and Development Herbert Campman, the project is approved and funds for further research are forwarded. Now working alongside Baer and Harrison is engineer Bill Rusch. Rusch designs a new game, and it is perhaps not surprising that it too harkens back to an archetypal playground activity, using three spot generators to produce two onscreen paddles along with a ball in a game of “catch”. Baer and Harrison further refine the play so that the ball can be served from off-screen when it has been missed by a player, creating a simple ping-pong game. 

After adding a light-gun and some other games, Baer’s Brown Box would be licensed exclusively by Magnavox and released in 1972 as the Odyssey, the world’s first home video game console. It sold 333,000 units up until its discontinuation in 1975, but that wasn’t where the real money was; possessing control of the first home video game patent, Magnavox was able to collect millions of dollars in licensing and lawsuit judgements from anyone attempting to enter the market after PONG became wildly successful.  That includes Nolan Bushnell and Atari, who created PONG.

For more information on the Odyssey, consult your local Dot Eaters entry. We’ll leave you with an amazing video of Ralph Baer demonstrating the Brown Box prototype at Sanders in 1969.

Click image to see early 70's footage of Baer demoing the TV Game Unit

Click image to see 1969 video footage of Baer demoing the TV Game Unit

 

Brown Box gameplay, precursor to Magnavox's Odyssey 1972

The Odyssey – What a Long, Strange Trip It’s Been

Today, Nov. 15, 2013, the latest in modern console gaming drops. The Playstation 4 features 8G of RAM, a 1.84 teraflop graphics chip, a 500G hard drive and an eight core CPU running somewhere in the neighbourhood of 1.6 GHz per core.

Now, follow me back through the murky mists of time.  Here, just put your hand on my arm, I’ll lead you through. Watch out, don’t trip over that original Playstation, it’s grey and hard to see in this fog.  Look, there’s Panasonic’s 3DO Real console, that monster is hard to miss. Be careful not to trip over those joystick cords for the Atari VCS.  Wait… ah, here we are.

The Odyssey, a home video game system by Magnavox 1972

Odyssey with controllers plugged in, and game cards

 

The Odyssey, released by Magnavox in 1972. Developed at military contractor Sanders Associates by Ralph Baer, it was the very first home video game console. The Odyssey didn’t have gigabytes of RAM, nor a graphics processor, nor a multi-core processing unit.  It didn’t have ANY CPU or any of that other stuff; inside it was a board made up of discreet components like capacitors, resistors and transistors. Its black and white graphics were so rudimentary that packaged with the console were mylar overlays you would slip onto your TV screen to simulate various backgrounds.  You then played virtual Ping Pong, or shot at dots with an available light gun accessory. The Odyssey didn’t transport you onto a fully-rigged sailing ship as you plied the green waters of the Caribbean, nor did it place you on a frantic battlefield full of soaring jet fighters or rumbling tanks.

The Odyssey set, a home video game by Magnavox 1972

Beginning the Odyssey

 

The Odyssey did, however, take the first tentative step towards those later worlds.  It was the starting point, with the PS4 and Microsoft’s Xbox One as the current destination. We will keep moving forward, but on these occasions, it’s good to also take a look back at where we’ve been.

For more information on the Odyssey, consult your local Dot Eaters article.

What Nolan Said: Who Was First?

There has been a long-standing debate between Nolan Bushnell and Ralph Baer as to who was the inventor of video games.  Speaking strictly chronologically, one would have to give the title to Baer, who developed a TV video game system at defense contractor Sanders Associates in 1968,  a system which was bought by Magnavox, named the Odyssey, and produced as a commercial home video game system in 1972.  Based on its novelty, the Odyssey sold fairly well but didn’t exactly set the market on fire.  That same year, however, Bushnell founded Atari and produced Pong, a similar, coin-operated video ping-pong game who’s runaway success firmly established the video game industry.  To muddy the waters further, there is evidence that Bushnell was influenced by Baer’s invention when he conceived of Pong.

So for our purposes, we consider Baer to be the inventor of video games, and Bushnell to be the father of the video game industry. Such semantics and differing definitions of which is what gets muddled as time advances on, and so we are left with sniping of the sort we see in today’s What Nolan Said:

The quote is taken from an 2007 interview of Bushnell by the online arm of famed German newspaper Der Spiegel.  The link points to the English version of the interview.  The image is of Bushnell at the Bay Area Maker Faire in 2011, a festival celebrating invention and DIY culture hosted by Make magazine.  It comes from cclark395’s flickr feed.

For more information on the early beginnings of the video game industry, consult your local Dot Eaters article.