1966: A Big Year for Video Games

IMET RALPH BAER A FEW YEARS AGO.

I had just finished writing my book Game Console Hacking, and, given that Ralph is regarded as the “Father of Video Games,” he was an obvious choice to seek out to write the foreword. To my surprise, Ralph accepted the challenge and we’ve been friends, co-inventors, and business partners ever since.

At 84 years of age, Ralph’s thirst for inventing shows no sign of being quenched. He has invented hundreds of video games and toys, including the Magnavox Odyssey, Simon, and Computer Perfection.

What follows are selected questions and answers from an afternoon I spent with Ralph in his Manchester, N.H., home in June 2006. For the story of how video games were invented and developed in the early age of computing, along with pictures and schematics, be sure to check out Ralph’s recent book Videogames: In the Beginning (Rolenta Press), and his website ralphbaer.com.

old place that I came from [Germany].

After I came out of the service in 1946, I worked for Emerson Radio in Long Island fixing broken radio sets as they came off of the production line (which was almost every one). I eventually ended up at Sanders Associates in 1956, a defense electronics company. We developed systems such as radar and electronic countermeasure equipment. In 1966, I came up with something that had nothing to do with my job, namely the concept of using a television set for playing games.

That was the year you designed Chase Game,
your first television video game prototype.
Can you describe it?
A simple device in which two spots on the screen
could be controlled by two players, the object
being for one spot to chase the other, catch up
with it, and wipe it out. We also had light-gun,
target-shooting games right from the start.

This led to the development of a game con-

Can you give us some background on where sole in 1968, called the Brown Box (after the you grew up and how you got involved in fake wood-grain contact paper you applied to electronics? the metal case), which was the basis for the The short story of a long story: born 1922 in Magnavox Odyssey. What are some challenges Germany, left Germany in 1938 because of the you faced in licensing this novel invention? Nazis. I came to New York and worked in a factory. The biggest challenge was, “What the hell do we Started studying correspondence course for radio do with it?” What did I know about licensing at the and television services and graduated as a radio time? I was running an engineering department and service technician from the National Radio Institute. building radar systems. Then, it dawned on me: the Got drafted in 1943 and wound up in the same components inside our Brown Box were identical to

62 Make: Volume 08