Man Who Invented Video Games

The man who invented video games is Ralph H. Baer. Ralph Baer was born in 1922 southwest Germany. In 1938 he left Germany for U.S. with his family. In 1940 he graduated at National Radio Institute as a radio service technician. In the 1940’s he ran three radio service stores in NY City, he serviced all types of home and auto radios, early FM radios and TV Sets and built PA systems. In the late 1940’s he joined the army. In 1950 he became the chief (and only) engineer at Wappler, Inc, a small electro medical equipment firm in NY City. He designed and built surgical cutting machines, epilators, and muscle-toning low-frequency pulse generating equipment.

In 1967, Ralph Baer wrote the first video game played on a television set. The first game he made was called “chase.” Ralph Baer first conceived his idea in 1951 while working for Loral, which was a television company. Nothing even similar to Video Games happened for at least another fifteen years.

In the summer of 1966 Ralph Baer was waiting for another sanders engineer at a bus terminal. During his free time he took notes on using an ordinary home television for the use of playing games.

On September first 1966 he turned his notes into a four-page document that listed types of games that he thought of. He said they can be played on either channel three or four, the channels he called the “Lets Play” channels.

In December 1966 decided he should demonstrate his video game idea to Herbert Campman, (the company’s Corporate Director and most likely source of funding.) He showed Campman a demo. Campman thought it had potential. But he said that it had better do more interesting things than what was on the chase demo. Which was no more the two squares chasing one another.

On December 12th Ralph sent Campman a memo requesting some money to carry on the work. The first official funding was $2000 for direct labor and $500 for direct materials. It wasn’t a lot, but it was enough to keep the project going. In early February, Ralph figured it was time to get serious and sketched out some preliminary designs of a transistorized version of a basic TV game unit. On the 12th of February, he brought Bill Harrison, another technician on-board the TV game project. Having worked with Bill Harrison on another project, a military crash program, Ralph really liked Harrison's talents, so he commandeered him, and put him to working that small 10x20ft room of the 5th floor, where the first vacuum tube prototype had