In 2014 the games industry was worth $83 billion, and experts say that figure will rise by 9.4% in 2015. Since the 1970s, video games have gone from a novelty to one of the most exciting, advanced forms of entertainment in the world. This is thanks in part to American inventor Ralph Henry Baer, who designed the world’s very first games console.
It began in the summer of 1966 when Baer, then working as an engineer for defence contractors Sanders Associates, conceived what he called a “game box” – a device that would let people play electronic games on any television. Intrigued, Baer’s boss, Herb Campman, gave him $2500 and two employees to help him design a prototype, and the device that would later become the Magnavox Odyssey was born.
“Together with Bill Rush, an engineer, and Bill Harrison, a technician, Baer built three prototypes,” says Ulf Svensson from the Online Odyssey Museum. “The most successful prototype, the ‘brown box’ (called so because it was held together with brown packing tape), was shown to TV manufacturers, including Magnavox, who signed a deal with Sanders to mass produce it as the Odyssey.”
The Magnavox Odyssey was released in 1972 and sold 100,000 units in its first year. It consisted of a main console, a set of electronic “program cards”, and two so-called paddle controllers. The image on the screen was basic – essentially just white blocks moving on a black field – but translucent overlays designed to be placed over your TV, would help your imagination bring them to life. These included a tennis court, a casino roulette table, and a snowy mountainside criss-crossed with ski slopes.
Harold Goldberg, author of All Your Base Are Belong to Us: How Fifty Years of Videogames Conquered Pop Culture, says the Odyssey transformed a television set into an extension of the player. “It would let you interact with a square on a black-and-white screen that made you really believe you were volleying at tennis or aiming carefully as a brave marksman.”
The popularity of the television in America was the inspiration for the Odyssey. “I looked at them and thought, what can I do with these?” said Baer in 2007. “There are forty million of these things in the United States. If I could get 1% of that number to buy a device and plug it in to their set, that’s 400,000 people. Not a bad business objective.”
This train of thought lead to a four-page design document, written in 1966, that was the flashpoint for what we now know as a video games console.
While games are, even today, incorrectly assumed to be just for kids, Baer always saw the technology as being multi-generational. “Shooting at a screen is fun for anybody up to the age of a hundred and twenty-two,” he said. “Families watch television. It wasn’t fourteen-year-old Johnny sitting in his room with his own personal set. People were lucky to even have one. So the Odyssey being a family console just happened naturally.”
The Magnavox Odyssey isn’t as well known as the Atari 2600 or Nintendo Entertainment System, but its place in gaming history is sealed. At a time when computers were serious, arcane things used for solving mathematical equations, Baer used the technology to make something fun. And now you’d be hard-pressed to find a home that doesn’t have a games console under the TV. From Wii Sports to Call of Duty, gaming has become an intrinsic part of the modern living room.
In 2004, President George W. Bush awarded Baer the National Medal of Technology and Innovation for “his groundbreaking and pioneering creation, development and commercialisation of interactive video games.” He died 10 years later in his New Hampshire home aged 92. “The Magnavox Odyssey jump-started the industry which we now know as the video game industry, and did so in fair style,” he said. “Not too shabby for an idea taken from a few notes scribbled in New York in August of 1966.”
Today, you can see Baer’s original “brown box” prototype on display at the Smithsonian museum in Washington D.C. “The video game world has lost a pioneer,” said Atari founder and industry innovator Nolan Bushnell after his death. “Ralph’s contributions to the rise of video games should not be forgotten.”
Magnavox Odyssey
Ralph Baer’s Magnavox Odyssey, released in 1972, was the first commercial home video games console. It retailed at $99 (roughly $450 today) and sold 330,000 units. The system was bundled with translucent overlays that gamers would place over their television screens to simulate colour visuals, which the hardware was incapable of. The Odyssey could be connected to any TV, and its distinctive paddle controller – a box with two adjustable knobs on either side – was easy to use. This was one of the earliest examples of computer technology being accessible and used primarily for entertainment.
Famous for a reason
Ralph Baer didn’t seek fame, it found him for his love of gaming and bringing fun to all generations. The Famous Grouse’s reputation is also built upon being famous for a reason. Created in 1896, the founder Matthew Gloag didn’t want to be famous, he simply wanted to make the best whisky he could possibly make so he created The Grouse Brand. It soon became so popular that it was renamed The Famous Grouse. Renowned for its quality, craftsmanship and exceptional taste, The Famous Grouse is available in four expressions, including the smooth The Famous Grouse Mellow Gold and the dinstinctive The Famous Grouse Smoky Black.
Please enjoy The Famous Grouse whisky responsibly.
