"Father of video games" died at the age of 92

Pioneer of gaming consoles Ralph Baer has passed away

Portal Gamasutra reported the death of Ralph Henry Baer, ​​citing his own source from people close to him. Some publications, evaluating his contribution to the digital entertainment industry, have called Baer the "father of video games."

Rudolf Heinrich Baer was born in 1922 in Germany to a Jewish family, whose members successfully fled to the United States two months before the events of the Crystal Night .

In America, Baer changed his name. He graduated from the National Institute of Radio in 1940 and even managed to serve in military intelligence. Benefits of the former soldier helped in the subsequent education at the American Television Institute of Technology. In 1949, Baer received a bachelor's step and became a television engineer.

He worked at Wappler, Loral Electronics, Sanders Associates and IBM, but we remember him for his contribution to the video game industry. Basically, Baer was the first to create what is today a home game console.
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In 1966, he began to study the possibilities of computer games on a television screen. At that time, televisions were becoming cheaper, which opened up a huge market for other uses of these devices, including the military, with whom he was familiar, because until 1987 he worked for a military organization.

The realization was that at first it had the name Brown Box. The name was derived from the color of the film, which turned the case to give the surface of the wood texture. Baer recalled that a quarter of an hour after the device began to be shown to the representative of the patent office, the room was filled with people: everyone on the floor wanted to play.

It was difficult to interest TV manufacturers in an unusual gadget. In 1971, Baer licensed the Magnavox prefix, and the “brown box” received the marketing name Magnavox Odyssey.

It was the first digital home game console in history. It is interesting that its logic was not transistor-transistor, but diode-transistor: there were about 40 diodes and 40 transistors in the case.

Even despite the lack of sound and a rather bad marketing campaign (users believed that the console would not work with non-Magnavox TVs), more than 300 thousand copies were sold. A total of 27 games were released under the console.

Their logic elements were contained in cartridges, but there were no elements on the printed circuit boards - there were just tracks connecting the contacts. However, Baer also proposed the idea of ​​active cartridges. The set also included stickers on the screen, sheets for account management and other game items.

In addition, Baer created the Shooting Gallery . It was the first light gun for home gaming consoles and the first peripheral for a gaming console. The gun was sold along with the game for him.

In 1978-1979, Baer participated in the creation of three well-known electronic games: Simon , the sequel to Super Simon and the less popular Maniac .

In 2006, President Bush awarded Baer the US National Medal for Technology and Innovation. In 2008, the inventor received the Pioneer Award as part of the Game Developers' Choice Awards. Baer had the status of life member of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE).



On December 6, 2014, Ralph Henry Baer died at his home in Manchester, New Hampshire. For 92 years of his life, Baer received in his name more than 150 patents.