Video Games History

By the 1960s ralph baer had already made his mark as an electronics genius as a teenager he escaped Nazi Germany to the US where his scientific intellect flourished after the war Ralph Baer is one of the finest examples I can think of inventive ingenuity Guelph was the kind of person who was constantly thinking you know five to seven steps ahead of everybody else in society during the late 1940s and 1950s Ralph created everything from high fire accessories to snooping devices that observed the Soviet Union he was also convinced - television could be less passive and more interactive it was a radical concept in the 1950s so no one listened at this point in time was absolutely insane to try to think of reacting to a television set in any way other than just viewing in any way other than just being spoon-fed by whatever the networks or the the small independent companies thought they could they could feed you basically it was a medium where you just took it in you had no say in what you saw except for changing channels and in those days you didn't have that many channels to change in 1966 Ralph was designing equipment for a military contractor he was working with an alignment generator that created test lines on a TV screen you had these testers that would put cross hatches of horizontal lines and vertical lines on the screen so that you could test them and make sure they were working the Machine inspired him to imagine a completely new type of game he realized this will be really fun if we could put it in the users hands and the user could play with it you know what if I could bounce those lines around what if I could chase a dog around on the screen to turn his idea into reality he needed to find a way to generate a signal that changed those static lines into symbols that moved around the screen it was in September 1966 while sitting at a bus stop that it started to fall into place Ralph pulls out a spiral bound notebook he starts making notes he creates this memo in the first page he visualizes you know a whole gamut of game types that could be useful in video games ralph realized that if a radio frequency or RF signal could display moving pictures on a TV screen it should also be able to generate game symbols Ralph from you it would be difficult to persuade people at the office about his new idea where the focus was on serious military technology so he started to develop his TV game in secret at this point in time Ralph has enough people reporting to him in enough budget to be able to disguise what he's doing Ralph set to work using the components of an alignment generator he used a radio frequency oscillator to generate a video signal then a component called a sync generator synchronized that signal into one that the television understood a modulator then sent the signal to the TV

and placed it on channel three or four as the signal entered the TV a spot appeared on the screen which could move horizontally vertically and change shape he had proven that his concept worked Ralph then built an actual game box but it wasn't user-friendly he had used glass vacuum tubes to regulate the flow of electricity and these took up too much space and blew you couldn't put out a consumer game unit that was based on vacuum tubes because you know they would they would blow out and you would have to replace the tubes however new technology enabled Ralph to progress he enlisted a talented colleague bill Harrison who knew all about transistors tiny silicon semiconductors that performed the same function as vacuum tubes but without the bulk or fragility they also met Ralph's

game box could be smaller and more user-friendly finally a prototype game box is completed each game came with a plastic overlay such as a ping-pong table to make the game more realistic in June 1967 Ralph and his colleague decided to unveil their secret project to the bosses he was tired of hiding all of the expenses in the budget and he hoped that maybe he could loosen some of the purse strings Ralph had no idea how they would react to a game that was built without their knowledge at first the executives didn't know what to make of Ralph's game but once they got the hang of it they were hooked imagine if you will two men with military experience all the maturity that you expect to see but here they are playing on a television screen with all the intensity as though their life's prestige depends upon it that's the way it was in that 10 by 20 row Ralph's bosses gave him over $2,000 for staff and $500 for parts so Ralph could develop the game box further imagine that the video game revolution began on $2,500 worth of R&D money Ralph's TV game box became the Magnavox Odyssey the world's first home video game console Magnavox presents Odyssey the electronic game of the future it arrived in the shops in 1972 and over the next decade raus idea transformed to the home entertainment business I don't think he would have dreamed that he was creating an industry that would be in the billions of dollars by this time today. *In 2006 Ralph received the prestigious National Medal of Technology in honor of his video game inventions from the US president*