Ralph Baer was a magician who changed our lives forever, In television he saw possibilities of Art, He forged Art and television screen to make Video Games, when Liberal Arts and Technology are fused results are awesome, this is what i am trying to do in my own little capacity. I see Ralph Baer as an inspiration. So I have some pointers which i have collected by reading about him.
Ralph Baer Was Born in Germany, At Age of 11, he was expelled from school because he was jew, in these circumstances he left Germany and fled to US.
In the United States, he was self-taught and worked in a factory for a weekly wage of 12 dollars. He graduated from the National Radio Institute as a radio service technician in 1940. In 1943 he was drafted to fight in World War II and assigned to military intelligence at the United States Army headquarters in London.
With his secondary education funded by the G.I. Bill, Baer graduated with a Bachelor of Science degree in Television Engineering from the American Television Institute of Technology in Chicago in 1949. This was a Unique Course at that time, he must have some idea (Video Games) in his mind to work on.
After this his real innings started. In 1966, while an employee at Sanders, Baer started to explore the possibility of playing games on television screens. His notes from mid-1966 predict and detail many of the video game genres we take for granted today: action games, sports games & educational games.
Upon coming up with the idea of creating a game using the television screen, he wrote a four page proposal with which he was able to convince one of his supervisors to allow him to proceed. He was given US$2,500 and the time of two other engineers, Bill Harrison and Bill Rusch. They developed the “Brown Box” console video game system and thats why he is called Father of Video Games
In 2006, Baer donated all his hardware prototypes and documents to the Smithsonian Institution. He continued to tinker in electronics after the death of his wife. By the time of his death on 6 December 2014 Baer had over 150 patents in his name; in addition to those related to video games, he had patents for electronic greeting cards and for tracking systems for submarines.
My Respects and Goodbye to him, because his Start lead to the Video games which I Played in my Childhood, i must admit that even after being a father of One Child, I Play a lot of Video games… for all this…. Thank You Ralph Baer !
– Siddharth