Television engineer, Ralph Baer has changed all our lives for the better. Without him you may be off fishing or spending your days in the day light interacting with other humans.
Who is this legend? Before the grand days of inspired designer Shigeru Miyamoto and creative console designer Ken Kutaragi there was a man that had a vision about interactive television. A TV screen where you and your friends could compete in hours of entertaining virtual sports.
"Ralph Baer conceived the idea of an interactive television while building a television set from scratch for Loral in 1951 in the Bronx, New York. He explored these ideas further in 1966 when he was the Chief Engineer and manager of the Equipment Design Division at Sanders Associates. Baer created a simple two-player video game that could be displayed on a standard television set called Chase, where two dots chased each other around the screen. After a demonstration to the company's director of R&D Herbert Campman, some funding was allotted and the project was made "official". In 1967 Bill Harrison was brought on board, and a light gun was constructed from a toy rifle that was aimed at a target moved by another player." --wikipedia.org
His 1968 video game prototype was known by many collectors as the "Brown Box." In May 1972, we would come to know a full blown home console system known as the Magnavox Odyssey. Many older games can tell you stories, like fireside tales, about this little box and its awesome power over their childhood.
The Odyssey did something else that many do not realize, they invented the concept of Pong as we know it. No, not PONG by Atari, but Pong--the tennis game. The Odyssey had a tennis game that played and acted much like PONG without the sound. So much so, that Nolan Bushnell and many other tennis clones were sued for patent infringement because of it. Magnavox won the battle and would hold the rights to tennis like video game clones.
The first-generation of video game consoles were all very much Pong based games, leaving much to be desired for selection but gamers didn't know that yet. Gamers were excited to have a home video game console and it would be a few years before the expansion into other designs would take place.
Where would we be without this 1972 classic console and those that followed in the first generation? Well, in my humble opinion, we would have just now discovered the world of Super Mario Bros. and Donkey Kong.
Happy Birthday video games, you've had a long run and age 40 is just the beginning!
