500004161-03-01.jpg (Photo : www.computerhistory.org)
Ralph Baer, the father of video game consoles, passed away at the age of 92, according to video game news and development site Gamasutra.
For the uninitiated, Baer paved the way for the inception of video game consoles such as the Sony PlayStation, Microsoft Xbox, Nintendo GameCube and their modern counterparts today.
Baer worked for former U.S. defense contractor Sanders Associates Inc., where he and his colleagues Bill Rusch and Bill Harrison developed several prototypes of video game consoles between 1967 and 1969. They eventually created "Brown Box," the first prototype video game system which lets players play ping-pong and use a light gun--the first video game peripheral developed by Baer--to shoot targets on a television screen in 1966.
The prototype was then licensed by Sanders Associates to American electronics firm Magnavox, who named the game system "Odyssey" and launched it for their television sets in 1972.
Besides the creation of the first video game console, Baer also has developed more than 150 foreign and U.S. patents.
Baer, born in Germany in 1922, graduated as a radio service technician from the National Radio Institute in the U.S., where he also served in the U.S. Army during the Second World War. He went on to become a part of Sanders Associates as an equipment design staff engineer in 1956.
The video game console pioneer donated his prototype video game systems, notes and schematics to the Smithsonian National Museum of American History by George W. Bush in 2006. He was also awarded with the National Medal of Technology in the same year.
The Game Developers Choice Pioneer Award was also given to Baer in 2008.
"Had I listened to all those people 40 years ago who were telling me to stop the nonsense or made remarks like 'are you still screwing around with this stuff?' And hadn't proceeded, we might all not be here today," said Baer after receiving the 2008 Pioneer Award.
