Pioneer of video games dies at age 92

Associated Press

MANCHESTER, N.H.

Ralph Baer, a video-game pioneer who created both the precursor to “Pong” and the electronic memory game Simon and led the team that developed the first home video-game console, has died. He was 92.

Baer, a longtime resident of Manchester, died at his home Saturday, the Goodwin Funeral Home in Manchester confirmed Monday.

Born in Germany, Baer escaped the Holocaust with his family.

He started thinking about what later became the home video-game console while working as a television set designer in the 1950s. In the next decade, he started working on television games as chief engineer for Sanders Associates, now BAE Systems.

That led to The Brown Box, which was licensed by Magnavox and came out with the Odyssey in the early 1970s. The console, which connected to a television, could play about two dozen games, including one called “Table Tennis” that was a precursor to “Pong.”

His son, Mark Baer, recalled playing early versions of video games on a small black and white TV perched on a shoe stand.

Baer received the National Medal of Technology from President George W. Bush in 2006 and was inducted into the U.S. National Inventors Hall of Fame in 2010.

Before inventing the system that became known as the Magnavox Odyssey, Baer said he often was asked by co-workers how the group would make any money from the project.

“People thought I was wasting my time and the company’s money, for that matter,” he said in 2010. “There’s no way anybody could have predicted how fast this industry would take off.”