Ralph H. Baer, Inventor of Home Video Game Console, Dead at 92

By Kamal Nayan - 07 Dec '14 23:02PM

Ralph Baer, widely known as father of video games, died on Saturday at his home in Manchester. He was 92. Baer invented and patented the first home video game system, while working at a defense contractor in the late 1960s.

While working as an engineer at a defense contractor, Baer began to explore the possibility of playing video games on a television. He worked on "Brown Box" - a prototype that eventually became the Magnavox Odyssey, the first home gaming console.

The invention is believed to have changed the computer gaming landscape, which was once limited to just expensive computers.

Sanders Associates, employer of Mr. Baer, applied for the patient for first video game and was granted US Patent No. 3,728, 480 two years later.

"The examiner and the lawyer were talking jargon back and forth, and the examiner really wasn't paying much attention to me," Baer recalled. "While they were bantering back and forth about the claims, I set up a small television set and my game console in the examiner's office, and within 15 minutes every examiner on the floor of that building was in that office wanting to play the game."

The company licensed its system to Magnavox and began selling Odyssey in the summer of 1972 - first home video game console.

Around 130,000 units of the console were sold in the first year.

In an interview three years ago, Mr. Baer recalled at the time he could not foresee the revolution his invention would bring, he remained modest about it.

"Could I project how far this thing was going to go? The answer's obviously no. Nobody realized, even at that time, that we were on this geometric curve ... that would go straight up to heaven," Baer said the Salt Late Tribune. "It was unforeseeable; it was fantastic. I'm glad it happened. And if I hadn't had started it, someone else would have."

In 2006, Mr. Baer was awarded the National Medal of Technology by President George W. Bush. In 2010, he was inducted into the National Inventors of Hall of Fame.