Happy 100th birthday Ralph Baer!
March 8, 2022, marks the 100th anniversary of the birth of one of the 20th century’s most prolific and consequential inventors. It was on this day that Ralph Henry Baer was born in Pirmasens, Germany. Baer would go on to create a host of electronic devices, toys, and gadgets. None, however, would be bigger than his seminal conceptualization and work around what was to become the modern video game industry.
It is estimated that in 2020 alone, the video game industry generated in excess of $180 billion in commercial activity which is far larger than the television and movie industries combined! And it can all be directly traced back to years of work by a team of engineers from Sanders Associates in New Hampshire, now BAE Systems, led by inventor Ralph H Baer.
By 1966, tens of millions of Americans – and many millions more around the world – had television sets in their homes and Ralph Baer, who had fled fascist Germany and settled in the United States, was keenly aware of this fact: After his return from the US Army during WWII Baer earned a degree via the GI Bill in television engineering. He was among the first to venture into this kind of technical training and, along with his natural inquisitiveness and creativity, Baer could see the growing use of television technology first-hand.
On Sept. 1, 1966, while sitting at a bus stop, Baer brainstormed ways to make television sets even more useful and entertaining. He jotted down all the different types of activities that he imagined could be played on a television unit, including table tennis, auto racing and chess along with other activities such as the interactive use of the medium for instruction and the creation of art.
And while that was hardly the only thing Ralph Baer had done to that point or would do throughout his 70-plus years of inventing, it was tremendously consequential. Baer had an almost childlike fascination with trying to create new things. And so it was that he “thought about using the television as more than just a box to stare at but as something that could be used as an interactive medium,” as he once described it.
After starting initial independent work on his idea, Baer was given the green light to assemble a team of engineers to bring his vision for the interactive television into focus. For more than three years Baer and his team, working out of their lab on Canal Street in Nashua, developed technology that would be nothing short of revolutionary.
The result of that work was that in 1969 Baer’s team officially unveiled the very first multiplayer television video game system which they nicknamed “The Brown Box.”
The Brown Box – which referred to the woodgrain, self-adhesive vinyl that covered the console – introduced and featured separate controls and a multigame program system, the basic features most video game units still have today.
On that first system, one could play table tennis, checkers, four different sports games, target shooting with a light gun, and a golf-putting game. The original unit is now part of Lemelson Center’s collection at the Smithsonian’s American History Museum in Washington, D.C.
In 1971, (relating back to US Application Data of Jan. 15, 1968) Baer filed for the first video game patent which concerned itself with the workings of the Brown Box. Thereafter, the Brown Box was licensed to the Magnavox Corporation and sold as the “Odyssey” in 1972 – the world’s first video game system. Other systems followed, and the modern video game industry was created. Since those early years, Baer’s groundbreaking work has found its way into various platforms including personal computers, handheld devices, and smartphones.
No one could have fully imagined it then, but Baer’s work laid the groundwork for many aspects of today’s related multi-hundred-billion-dollar industry and related concepts such as the presence-style video games in myriad platforms. As a result, Ralph Baer has been called “The Father of Video Games” for his part in spearheading the system from which the modern video game industry sprang.
Baer also has been recognized as “an Icon of American Innovation” and was inducted into the US Patent and Trademark Office’s Inventor Hall of Fame, even receiving the National Medal of Technology from the President of the United States, as well as the Game Developers Choice Award for his pioneering work in 2008. His artifacts, papers and even his workshops are on display at museums around the country, including the Smithsonian National Museum of American History in Washington, D.C, the Strong Museum in Rochester, NY, the Millyard and See Science Museums in Manchester, and the Dynamikum science museum in Baer’s birth city of Permasens, Germany. From left, Mark, Jim and Nancy Baer share a moment on the Ralph Baer Memorial Bench featuring a statue of their dad, Ralph Baer, ‘the father of the video game.’ A rededication of the plaza is scheduled for May 21, 2022, at 1 p.m. File Photo/Cheryl Senter
Baer has earned recognition from around the world, from Japan to Italy to Australia’s Center for the Moving Image in Melbourne in addition to receiving recognition as a lifetime Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) Fellow.
Three years ago the City of Manchester unveiled a statue and plaza in the city’s Silicon Millyard, an area now regarded as a substantial tech hub in New England, honoring Baer, the local technology landscape, and his vision. It is considered a fitting tribute to the man whose efforts, along with his team of engineers and companies that supported him, helped change the world.
A rededication of the plaza is currently scheduled for May 21, 2022, at 1 p.m. The presence of the plaza and efforts associated with it are intended to both honor a man and an effort that helped shape the world and also to support various funds and scholarships that are designed to pay it forward at both Manchester’s Central High School and UNH Law in Concord.
