The industry started like a lot of great inventions do, on a few pieces of notebook paper. The father of the gaming industry, an engineer named Ralph Baer, had jotted down on paper the blueprint for what would later become a multi-billion dollar industry.

The year was 1966, and Baer had come up with an idea that you could control and manipulate images on a television screen, and he jotted his notes down as he sat in a bus terminal. A few days after that, he showed the idea to a co-worker of his that went through the proper legal channels to get a copyright for the idea. Baer soon drew up a schematic outlining the technical side of his idea. He even had the ideas in place for controlling the objects on-screen. Using two sets of knobs, the player would manipulate the icon onscreen. He was also sure that color could be added, which in 1966 was no small feat.

Baer got in touch with another co-worker, who designed a vacuum-tube circuit which allowed the objects to be displayed on the screen. Baer's first game was a chase game that involved two simple spots. One would chase the other and attempt to catch it. Baer showed off the project to the head of the company he worked for, which designed complex military systems and had nothing to do with games of any sort. The director of R&D was impressed by Baer's device, so much so that he suggested Baer seek funding for it. Baer was granted two thousand dollars-- $500 for materials and $1,500 for labor. The first videogame was born.

Shortly after New Year's (1967) Baer asked a new employee of his to go get a toy rifle which they later modified into a light sensitive device that could be pointed at target objects on the screen. By February, the world's first working lightgun was finished. The object onscreen could be shot, at which point it would disappear. Then the idea surfaced that a second player could manipulate the object onscreen to try and keep it from being shot by the player with the lightgun. The director of R&D at Baer's company came out again to see the lightgun. The meeting went well; more money was funneled into Baer's idea.

Baer and his associates worked on sychronizing the circuits more efficiently over the next few months, essentially tweaking the controls for the games. They also worked on the color modulators and designs. By June, Baer's company wanted him to give a demonstration to the senior management of the company. The demonstrations went so well that they were allowed to continue with the project even though most of the higher-ups had doubts about its solvency. By October, they had a finished unit. The cost of materials? About sixteen dollars. Baer had wanted to keep the game at retail for around twenty, which was a dimming possibility.

Around then, the idea to integrate Baer's idea into the burgeoning cable TV market began to surface. The thought was that the "game box" could be integrated to receive a signal from the cable signal. Also around that time, the subject of a "third spot" came up. Unlike the two player controlled spots, this one would be machine controlled and the idea was brought up about the third spot being a "ball." Baer admittedly isn't sure if he realized at the time what a huge advancement the third spot was, but it wasn't long before he and his team were talking about ping-pong, football and hockey. One of Baer's close associates, Bill Harrison, soon had a working ping-pong game up and running on the game box. The sports game was born.

More executives came. More money poured in. They worked on perfecting the existing lineup: a collection of gun and sports games. The idea was soon brought up that the color would dictate what the sport was; Green would be football, white would be hockey and so on. This hardware would eventually become the world's first gaming console-- Magnavox's Odyssey.

The question of whether it could be done was smashed. But a larger question arose-- how to market it? Sanders (the company Baer worked for) was a military company with almost no experience in retail marketing. And then there was the problem of pricing it high enough to make a profit. Baer's invention was on the verge of stagnancy it seemed. Questions were starting to be asked as to why Baer was fooling around with something that there wasn't a market for.

Baer needed traction and it was obvious that he had hit the ceiling with Sanders as far as his idea went. So Baer went to a logical place, the cable market. Cable was in deep crap at the time. It was taking off much slower than anticipated, and Baer thought that the two inventions could play off of each other to carve out a market. Baer contacted Tele Promp Ter Corporation in New York, which at the time was the largest cable company in the U.S. with some 60,000 subscribers. Tele Promp Ter was interested in the idea. The bigwigs flew out to see Baer on several occasions and eventually, they came to an agreement and Baer went to work on an action plan. Baer and his team thought they had found the solution, but they were wrong. The cable industry completely imploded about that time, and Tele Promp Ter fell victim to lack of funding. Baer was back to square one.

So Baer went to the next logical choice, the TV manufacturers. Baer met with representatives from RCA, Sylvania, Zenith, Magnavox and Warwick. The response was positive across the board, but only RCA bit on the idea, which later fell apart after months of negotiations. Finally, Baer caught a break. One of the RCA executives left and joined up with Magnavox. He was so impressed with the "brown box" that he pitched the execs at Magnavox to take a look at it. The response was lukewarm, except for one man, and that man turned out to be the General Manager in charge of Development and Manufacturing. He green-lighted the project right on the spot. The Odyssey was born.

It took a while to hit the market, but in 1972, it was finally ready. To Magnavox's credit, they put a ton of effort into the Odyssey. Demonstration after demonstration was held. Dealers were made aware of the new product. They decided to package the best games separately as after sale items and Baer's lightgun was put out in an extremely attractive redesigned form. 100,000 Odyssey units were sold that season, and that was in spite of extremely limited distribution; the Odyssey could only be sold by authorized Magnavox dealers. Public demonstrations were being held nationwide, and a man named Nolan Bushnell was at one of them. Bushnell, who was working on ideas of his own, decided to implement Baer's idea, only in a different direction. Bushnell wanted to make cabinets that people could play by putting a coin in them. Bushnell would later go on to revolutionize the arcade with a game very similar to Baer's ping-pong game called "Pong."

In a way, Bushnell's involvement in making the arcade a reality also helped Baer. Pong became a huge hit, and people in turn wanted to buy an Odyssey so they could play Pong at home. The industry exploded, and Baer would spend the next twenty years of his life spending an inordinate amount of time testifying in court against copyright infringers. Every single case that came up was upheld. Baer had been meticulous in his record keeping and there was simply not many loopholes for other companies to skate through, and all these companies had to pay for the rights to use the design Baer had made.

Still, even though Baer's idea finally came to fruition, he is almost unknown today, which is a travesty. Most gamers from my generation attributed Bushnell with the creation of the industry, which couldn't be further from the truth. It's sad that the man who created this industry doesn't receive more acclaim, especially from the very people working in it. There's no Ralph Baer Day for the industry, and only a few brief mentions of his accomplishments. Like a spoiled kid with daddy's credit card, the industry seems intent on forever looking forward (never back) without a word of thanks. In Stephen King's epic Dark Tower series, the protagonist (Roland) makes mention of the term "Forgetting the face of your father" which in Roland's native language meant that you have no honor, no shame; that you've done something stupid or dishonorable. I think that's the perfect phrase for an industry that doesn't memorialize or pay tribute to its founder. But it doesn't seem to bother the mild mannered Baer one bit. When I e-mailed him for an interview for this entry (which he graciously refused) he had this to say:

Hi John:

Thanks for your kind comments.

I have had a lot of exposure in the past two years and really need not worry about my legacy any more. All of my original videogame hardware and documents are going to be archived and eventually displayed at the Smithsonian. In addition I already have replicas in such nifty places as the National Science Museum in Tokyo, the Heinz Nixdorf Museum in Germany, The Game On exhibit at the Chicago Science Museum, etc.

If you are really interested in the history of videogames and my part in that long saga, then how about going to my website at <www.ralphbaer.com>. Read "The Story of how videogames invaded the Home TV set" in the Videogame History section.

While you are there, you might also take a look at the details about my new book, "Videogames: In the Beginning".

Thanks again!

Baer was recently honored at the GPhoria awards which is a step in the right direction, but there's a long way to go in honoring the man who made many people's careers possible, and as gamers, our dreams possible. Anyone who works in or appreciates this hobby owes Ralph Baer their thanks, from the gaming journalists to the developers to the fans. This man made the Kojimas and Miyamotos, the Housers and the Lannings, yet you never hear them say a word about him.

They've forgotten the face of their father.