Ralph Baer, the man who invented the video game console, passed away in his home in Manchester, New Hampshire on Saturday. He was 92.
It was on a hot summer afternoon in 1966 when Ralph Henry Baer was overtaken by a new idea. Little did he know the idea he had was the same small spark that ignited a revolution in gaming, one that allowed millions of children and adults around the world to visit fantasy worlds on their television screens with the use of the video game console.
Outside on the steps of the Port Authority Bus Terminal in Manhattan, the 44-year-old engineer who was working for the Nashua-based Sanders Association began scribbling into a yellow pad the beginnings of what would be the multi-billion video game console industry. At that time, Baer did not dream of jumpstarting a new hobby for millions of people. He was simply interested in a "game box" that allowed people to play all kinds of games on their television set.
Although many of his coworkers at Sanders thought he was simply "screwing around with that stuff," one of Baer's bosses handed him $2,000 for research and $500 for materials. He also assigned two other people to work with him during the nights inside one of Sanders' cramped attic offices. After a few years, Baer and his employer filed the patent for the first gaming system, which Baer called the Brown Box.
In 1972, the humble Brown Box was licensed to Magnavox, which used Baer's invention in Odyssey, the first home video console system. The Odyssey, which consisted of 40 transistors and 40 diodes, sold 130,000 units in its first year.
However, Baer's Brown Box didn't see smooth sailing after that. Plenty of other companies hit the market a few years after Odyssey, the most popular of which is Pong by Atari, which went on to make a multi-million dollar business out of video game consoles. Considering the Pong a patent infringement, Sanders took Atari to court and won $700,000 in licensing fees for the Brown Box technology. Baer's employee went on to file 20 other patent infringement cases after that, winning over $100 million in licensing fees.
Baer, widely considered as the father of video games, was a prolific inventor, having received more than 150 patents for inventions that spanning everything from talking doormats to submarine tracking systems. He is also known for developing the world's first light gun game system. Called the "Shooting Gallery," the game was included as an expansion pack for Odyssey and is deemed to be the ancestor of the classic Nintendo game "Duck Hunt."
Born on March 8, 1922, Baer grew up in a Jewish family in Pirmasens, Germany. During his early years, Baer's family fled from the Nazi regime to Holland before moving to America in 1938, where he began working more than 12 hours at a leather factory at 16 years old. He spent a significant chunk of his monthly earnings to invest in a basic radio engineering course, which he finished in a few months before moving on to the advanced program.
During World War II, Baer was drafted as an intelligence officer for the Army. He was destined in Europe, where during his free time he studied algebra and invented radios made out of mine detectors.
After the war, he went on to study television engineering at the Television Institute of Technology. In his early years in the television industry, Baer suggested adding a game-playing feature to a new state-of-the-art TV set he was tasked to design at the time. He was rejected by a boss who was more concerned about missed deadlines than sparking a revolution.
In 2006, Baer received the National Medal of Technology from President George W. Bush for his contribution to the gaming industry. He was admitted into the National Inventions Hall of Fame four years after.
"Had I listened to all those people 40 years ago who were telling me to stop the nonsense or made remarks like 'Are you still screwing around with this stuff?' and hadn't proceeded, we might all not be here today," Baer said when he received the Pioneer Award in 2007. "Certainly, things might have been different."
Baer is survived by three children, James, Mark and Nancy, and four grandchildren. His wife, Dena Whinston, died in 2006.
Below is a video taken in 1969 of Baer testing Brown Box.
