Ralp Baer, the visionary engineer considered to be the father of video games passed away Sunday (12/07/2014) according to sources close to the industry veteran.
Baer, a German born Jew was kicked out of school at age fourteen after the rise of the Nazi Party. Once Hitler came to power, his family left Germany, opting to move to America. He joined the army during World War II and was stationed in England where he taught himself algebra. At one point during the war he was diagnosed with pneumonia and hospitalized while the rest of his platoon was ordered to invade Normanday.
After the war he attended the American Television Institute of Technology in Chicago and graduated with a Bachelor’s degree in television engenieering.
Baer’s career took him the Equipment Design Division of Sanders Associates, a defence contractor based in New Hampshire. It was during his thirty year career with Sanders that he came up with an idea for playing games on a tevlevision set in August of 1966.
“I’m sitting around the East Side Bus Terminal during a buisness trip to New York, thinking about what you can do with a TV set other than tuning in channels you don’t want. And I came up with the concept of doing games, building something for $19.99.” – Ralph Baer
Ralph Baer and his associates; Bill Harrison and Bill Rusch went through a number of different trials and protypes for displaying and manipulating images on a TV screen. In June of 1967 their work on adding a hard-wired logic circut led them to a simple concept. A little ball that could be bounced back and forth across the screen via paddles controlled by two players. This first true video game would become known to the world as Pong.
As a defense contractor, Sanders was in no position to market an entertainment device to the public. Baer turned to television set manufactuer’s to try and find a partnership. After being turned down by a number of companies, he finally found interest in his device from Magnavox. The first video game console in history launched in 1972 and was called Odyssey.
Baer continued his work throught his life, coming up with many more inventions including the popular memory game Simon.
In 2008 Ralph Baer received the National Medal of Technology from President George W. Bush and in 2010 was inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame.
Ralph Baer was 92 years old.
– courtesy of Gamasutra and the Ultimate History of Video Games by Steven Kent.
Written by The Watchman
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