Ralph Baer

Biography

Of Jewish family, it leaves Germany and leaves to the the United States in 1938. It there is graduate National Radio operator Institute as a maintenance man in Radiophonie in 1940 and repairs radios until in 1943. He is then enlisted and fights within the framework of the Second world war during three years, of which one while remaining in the United States. He is assigned with the Intelligence military and attached to the HQ of Eisenhower to London, although he is in France.

In 1946, it returns to the American Television Institute off Technology, where he is the first pupil to obtain in 1949 a diploma for the occupation of engineer in Télévision. In 1946, it returns to Wappler Inc. , then at Loral Electronics , manufacturer of Television set S in 1951. When one asks him there to create a television set more powerful than the other available ones on the market, he proposes to integrate a Jeu into the television set, but its idea is rejected.

It Marie in 1952 and returns the same year at Transitron Inc. Then, in 1956, it is committed Sanders Associates (today subsidiary of Lockheed), where it manufactures Radar S. It becomes there chief engineer in 1966.

September 1st, 1966, it reflects on paper on its idea of play on television set, by imagining a black box being attached to the television set, outlines of a Console of video game. It creates with the assistance of Bob Tremblay, one of the engineers of the team, a little game named Chase with two players where each one controls a small point, one trying to catch the other. Impressed by the play, the Sanders direction creates a division TV Ranges Home Equipment to develop the principle to with it.

Ralph Baer creates a second play taking again the principle of old, except that the player must catch the point by signing it with a Pistolet out of plastic, prémice of an accessory of video game re-used on many consoles thereafter. As from September 1967, Baer starts to imagine various possibilities of play, of which one of tennis which becomes their principal project. It draws a prototype named from it Brown Box, who is shown with Irving Kahn, chairman of the TelePrompter Corporation , which is interested, but the development costs and the absence of guarantee of success prevent the project from succeeding.

The Brown Box is finally bought by Magnavox, from which the engineers draw the prototype from the Odyssey, which leaves in 1971. One of the plays available on the console is a play of tennis, which Pong will resemble enormously (Nolan Bushnell, its creator, is attacked for plagiarism by Magnavox).

Thereafter, Ralph Baer helps Coleco to create to them Coleco TELSTAR and the principle of sound Vid-Kid sells to them. He also invents the electronic play Simon in 1978.

See too

Site of Ralph Baer
Grospixels.com - File on Ralph Baer
Gamopat.com - an interview of Ralph Baer

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