RIP, Ralph Baer

 Posted by (Visited 5199 times)  Game talk  Tagged with: ,
Dec 072014
 

During a business trip for Sanders to New York City in 1966 I found myself waiting for another Sanders engineer at a bus terminal; he was going to join me for a meeting with a client. I took advantage of my free time and jotted down some notes on the subject of using ordinary home TV sets for the purpose of playing games. I have a distinct image in my mind of sitting on a cement step outside the bus terminal, enjoying a nice warm, sunny summer day, occasionally looking out at the passing traffic, waiting for my associate to show up and scribbling notes on a small pad. It was “Eureka” time — but of course I didn’t know that then. The concept of playing games on an ordinary TV set had bubbled up once again from my subconscious and I got that exciting feeling of “being on to something,” a feeling that is so familiar to me.

September 6, 1966 – Genesis!

When I got back to my office in New Hampshire on September 1, 1966, I transcribed those notes into a four-page disclosure document and tossed the New York notes into the wastebasket. In those four new pages I outlined the idea of playing interactive television games on a home TV set. That was the genesis of the industry.

–Videogames: In the Beginning

That’s an excerpt from Ralph’s book, which he sent to a mailing list we were both on years ago. We traded a few emails after that, where he showed himself to be a wise and thoughtful fellow, and generous with his time. Unfortunately, none of those emails seem to have survived the many transitions between computers that I have made over the last decade.

It had been years since I had talked with him, but today was a sad day.

  10 Responses to “RIP, Ralph Baer”

  1. richardbartle says:
    December 8, 2014 at 1:12 am

    I was due to travel with Ralph on a train journey in Germany in 2009, to a conference at which we were both speaking. Sadly, my brother died and I had to pull out. I never got the chance to meet Ralph again, although we exchanged several emails.

    He was largely shunned by the industry, I believe in part because he could come across as rather prickly and entitled. The fact remains, though, that he did invent the home video console and that his Magnavox Odyssey was the progenitor of today’s machines.

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