Posted on 12/07/2014 1:10:09 PM PST by Monty22002
The father of video games, Ralph H. Baer, has passed away at age 92. He came to rest in his New Hampshire home on the night of Saturday, Dec. 6 according to Wikipedia and a Facebook post by video game historian Leonard Herman, a friend of Baer.
Dubbed the "Thomas Edison of the home TV game" by Popular Electronics Magazine in 1980, Baer's Odyssey game system was the first home video game system. The patent for the idea was filed on August 10, 1970 and the system was released by Magnavox in 1972.
(Excerpt) Read more at examiner.com ...
1972 release. Man, that really is ANCIENT history.
He invented ‘pong’? My first.
His stuff was from before the actual ‘pong’ Atari game.
the man that turned pinball machines into drink holders...
RIP.
Wow. He WAS old.
Magnavox lost a major lawsuit against Atari. I believe they settled. But Baer’s Odyssey system was the first. Magnavox must’ve been really poorly managed, since they basically blew the entire game market at home.
The father of gaming would be whoever invented the idea of changeable cartridges, so that one system could play multiple games. I believe the Atari 2600 was the first home console to do that, or at least the system that popularized it.
Game over?
Actually it was Baer and the 1972 Odyssey that had the first cartridges.
Still have in my attic somewhere.
There is a pantheon of American companies who have had a chance to do great things and flubbed big time. Add to Magnavox the name of Kodak which actually did have the FIRST DIGITAL CAMERA to market in cooperation with APPLE! Add XEROX which developed most of the main hardware and software components of modern personal computing (PARC - Palo Alto Research Center) and did not know what to do with them. Steve Jobs toured it - Veni, vidi, vici!
Mine too. :)
Not cartidges, cards. The cards on the Odyssey were just a chunk of plastic with strips of aluminum contacts. No electronics at all. Depending on which contacts were present on a given card, the analog circuits in the Odyssey would do different things.
The entire game engine was analog. The continuously varying voltages in the transistor caps deflected the cathode ray tube.
It was an elegant design, but had nothing in common with modern digital video games.
Add to your list Digital Equipment Corporation.
Well, I’m not sure who else would get the title of ‘father’. There were other games on mainframes and so on. The only other contender would be Nolan Bushnell.
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