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When most people think about the first video game, they think of Pong,
the ping-pong arcade game released by Atari in August 1972.
Nolan Bushnell, Pong's inventor, referred to himself as Father of Video Games.
However, he was wrong. He was NOT the father of video games.
And PONG was NOT the first!
So, what was the first home video game?
And who fathered this amazing industry that generates more money than the movie and music industry combined?
The answers are next on Marking History!
This is the historical marker for Ralph Baer, known as the father of video games.
Right next to the marker is his life size bronze statue,
resting on a park bench and holding the first video game console.
His marker and statue are located here in Manchester, New Hampshire a few hundred feet south of the Notre Dame Bridge.
Ralph held more than 150 U.S. and foreign patents
and had a profound influence on electronic games, military simulators, and medical devices.
He also had a lot to do with a little game that you might have heard of ...
the game Simon.
Ralph Baer licensed the FIRST home video game to Magnavox
"This is Odyssey, the new electronic game simulator"
who rebranded it as the first interactive video game system, the Magnavox Odyssey, and released it in 1972.
months before the PONG arcade game was introduced.
Now the rest of the story.
It all started on a summer day in 1966.
Ralph Baer is waiting to meet a colleague at the New York City Port Authority Bus Terminal.
He uses his free time scribbling notes on a small pad. It was a defining moment in gaming history!
The subject was using ordinary home TV sets for the purpose of playing games.
What do we do with television set except watch channel four
or shut it off when there's nothing decent it on.
It uses this expensive display that's in everybody's home.
It cost very little cause it's made by the millions.
So why not do something else with it.
So why not, let's play games.
That's how it started. I get back to the office and I wrote a description which lays it all out.
That's how it got started.
His conceptual ideas included
And the target audience were owners of over 52 million TV sets in American homes.
The date was September 1st, 1966 - the genesis of a brand-new industry.
Next year, Ralph convinced his employer, Sanders Associates, a huge defense contractor in New Hampshire to fund a small R&D
team and begin development. His first test device was simply called TV Game #1.
Users could play ping pong with a dot on the screen. Sanders first applied for US patents in mid 1967.
Ralph called it “Gaming” because it was a term regularly used in the military
and gave the project the appearance of being within the company's scope of interest as a military contractor.
He understood that the games had to be fun or investors and consumers would not be interested.
One year later, Baer and his team created the seventh version of their TV Game Unit.
It became known as the “Brown Box” because they covered the aluminum chassis
with brown, self-adhesive wood- grain vinyl to make it look a little more attractive.
Games included Ping-Pong, Handball, Hockey, Volleyball, Target Shooting and Golf Putting.
Cards illustrated which switches to select in order to play a certain game.
In 1971, Magnavox licensed the technology from Sanders
and in the summer of 1972 released its Magnavox Odyssey Home Video Game System.
Magnavox presents Odyssey, the electronic game of the future.
Odyssey easily attaches to any brand TV, black and white or color
to create a closed circuit electronic playground.
Odyssey gives you all the exciting action of hockey and eleven other
challenging play and learning games for the entire family.
Odyssey, a new dimension for your television.
Now at your Magnavox dealer. He's listed in the Yellow Pages.
Now comes the controversy and the lawsuits!
Some say that PONG was the first video game because it was so popular when it came out.
The date was August 1972, at Andy Capps Tavern in Sunnyvale, California.
However, months earlier, Magnavox had already released its Odyssey home videogame console!
And on March 22, 1971, a full year before Pong appeared in arcades,
Baer and his company, Sanders, had filed for the first video game patent, which was later approved.
Nolan Bushnell would have a difficult time proving paternity.
Here is his signature on the visitor sign-up sheet to play Odyssey's Ping-Pong game
during an open house on May 24,1972.
Keep in mind that this was months before Pong, the arcade game, would magically appear in bars.
It was years later that Bushnell admitted to the fact that his Pong game was inspired by playing Magnavox's Odyssey.
In April 1974, Magnavox filed a patent infringement suit against Atari.
Although Magnavox had no legal claim to the game of table tennis itself,
Magnavox noted that Baer's broad-range patent covered any technology
that used electrical circuits to control dots on a standard television screen.
During trial, Judge John Grady asked to see the inside of a Pong arcade game.
Inside was a modified black and white Admiral TV set turned into a television monitor.
The trial ended with Judge Grady's decision in favor of Magnavox.
Atari settled for $1.5 million and became the first licensee of the technology from Magnavox
in order to continue to market Pong and other video games that followed.
Meanwhile, sales of the Magnavox Odyssey spiked because of the success of Pong.
Consumers bought the Odyssey game console so they could play their favorite arcade game at home.
With approximately 350,000 units sold, Magnavox Odyssey was not considered a commercial success.
However, Magnavox would generate almost three times the revenue of Odyssey sales
by filing lawsuits against game companies infringing on Baer's patent.
All told, Magnavox won over $100 million from the lawsuits alone.
Ralph Baer never did stop inventing. Here are just a few “firsts” that he developed over his career.
Ralph Baer's most famous and successful game had to be SIMON
the hand-held, single chip microprocessor game licensed to Milton Bradley in 1978.
In an example of irony, Simon was inspired by Atari's arcade game called "Touch Me".
Forty years later, Simon is still being played by millions.
In 2004 Ralph Baer is awarded the National Medal of Technology by President George W. Bush.
Baer continued to invent electronic toys and games until his passing on December 7, 2014 at the age of 92.
Today you can visit Ralph Baer's basement workshop on display
at the Smithsonian Institute in Washington, D.C.
And it all started with Baer's bus stop brainstorm on a summer day in 1966.
If history can be taught with stories
they can never be forgotten.
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