In the days when most people were content to relax in front of the family television set, Ralph Baer, who has died aged 92, had a revolutionary idea. As an electronics engineer, he realised that people could control what was on the screen, even if it was little more than a white dot. The direct result was the first home video games console, the Magnavox Odyssey, which sold more than 330,000 units between 1972 and 1974. It also started an industry in which consoles sell tens of millions of units and blockbuster games can earn more than Hollywood movies.
Baer had his eureka moment in 1966 while waiting outside a bus station in Manhattan, New York, and wrote a four-page outline about the “game box” and some possible games. At the time, however, he was chief engineer running eight equipment design departments for Sanders Associates, a large military contractor that was later merged into Lockheed Martin Aerospace and is now part of BAE. His bosses were not interested at first but eventually Sanders gave Baer a $2,500 budget and two co-workers, Bill Harrison and Bill Rusch, to develop the idea as a side-project.
Continue reading...