25 Facts About Ralph Baer

Ralph Baer's family fled Germany just before World War II and Ralph Baer served the American war effort, gaining an interest in electronics shortly thereafter.

Ralph Baer continued to design several other consoles and computer game units, including contributing to design of the Simon electronic game.

Ralph Baer continued to work in electronics until his death in 2014, with over 150 patents to his name.

Ralph Baer is considered "the Father of Video Games" due to his many contributions to games and helping to spark the video game industry in the latter half of the 20th century.

Ralph Baer was born in 1922 to Lotte and Leo Baer, a Jewish family living in Germany, in Pirmasens, and was originally named Rudolf Heinrich Baer.

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Ralph Baer's father worked in a shoe factory in Pirmasens at the time.

Ralph Baer's family, fearing increasing persecution, moved from Germany to New York City in 1938, just two months prior to Kristallnacht, while Ralph Baer was a teenager.

Ralph Baer graduated from the National Radio Institute as a radio service technician in 1940.

Bill, Ralph Baer graduated with a Bachelor of Science degree in Television Engineering, which was unique at the time, from the American Television Institute of Technology in Chicago in 1949.

In 1949, Ralph Baer went to work as chief engineer for a small electro-medical equipment firm called Wappler, Inc There he designed and built surgical cutting machines, epilators, and low frequency pulse generating muscle-toning equipment.

In 1951, Ralph Baer went to work as a senior engineer for Loral Electronics in Bronx, New York, where he designed power line carrier signaling equipment, contracting for IBM.

Ralph Baer started his own company before joining defense contractor Sanders Associates in Nashua, New Hampshire in 1956, where he stayed until retiring in 1987.

Ralph Baer would go on to create the first commercial video game consoles, among several other patented advances in video games and electronic toys.

Ralph Baer was a Life Senior Member of Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers.

Ralph Baer is considered to have been the inventor of video games, specifically of the concept of the home video game console.

In 1966, while an employee at Sanders Associates, Ralph Baer started to explore the possibility of playing games on television screens.

Ralph Baer first got the idea while working at Loral in 1951, another electronics company they wanted nothing to do with it at the time.

Ralph Baer recounted that in an early meeting with a patent examiner and his attorney to patent one of the prototypes, he had set up the prototype on a television in the examiner's office and "within 15 minutes, every examiner on the floor of that building was in that office wanting to play the game".

Ralph Baer began seeking a buyer for the system, turning to various television manufacturers who did not see interest in the unit.

Ralph Baer is credited for creating the first light gun and game for home television use, sold grouped with a game expansion pack for the Odyssey, and collectively known as the Shooting Gallery.

Ralph Baer would help both Magnavox and later Coleco to develop competitive units to Atari's products, including the Odyssey 100 and the Odyssey.

Ralph Baer developed a similar pattern-matching game "Maniac" for the Ideal Toy Company on his own, though the game was not as popular as Simon; Ralph Baer considered that Maniac was "really hard to play" and thus not as popular as his earlier game.

In 2006, Ralph Baer donated hardware prototypes and documents to the Smithsonian Institution.

Ralph Baer continued to tinker in electronics after the death of his wife through at least 2013.

Ralph Baer was posthumously given the Pioneer Award by the Academy of Interactive Arts and Sciences at the 2015 Game Developers Conference.

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