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Sam Hart
Ralph Baer has been called "the Tom Edison of video games," and for good
reason. It was under his supervision that a team of
500 engineers and technicians built the first video game console in 1966.
What is not commonly known is how and why this came
to be.
There was not a demand for the product. Only a handful of persons in the
world had played previous computer games. Those
games were usually variations of a game called "Spacewar" and could only be
played on $40,000 computer terminals. Thus the
question must be asked, who would have funded such a project? The answer
is: The Pentagon.
Baer worked for a military electronics consulting firm innocently named
Sanders Associates. In the past, Sanders Associates had
been employed by the United States military to design weapon circuitry,
wire missiles, and generally develop classified military
equipment. In 1965 military strategists came to Sanders with a project.
They desired computer simulations to help refine their
soldier's military prowess by teaching strategy and magnifying reflex
skills. They wanted the system to be compact enough to be
portable (portable in those days meaning "luggable" or lighter than eighty
or so pounds) and to use relatively inexpensive
equipment, namely an ordinary television screen. The project was given high
security precautions, as most projects were during
the height of the Cold War, and Baer was chosen to head it.
After struggling for months on the project by himself, Baer finally
succeeded in getting two white dots to chase each other around
a black and white screen. This impressed the military representatives
enough to warrant a dramatic increase in funding, which lead
to the hiring of more assistants. Originally, Baer hired two engineers,
Bill Harrison and Bill Rusch, to work full-time on the
secretive "TV Game" project. Together, they worked in a ten-by-fifteen foot
windowless office affectionately referred to as "the
game room." The office was always locked, and the only people with keys
were Baer, Harrison, and Rusch.
As time went by, more and more were employed in the project. Within a year
the team had a working ball-and-paddle game.
Over the next six months this would evolve into a moderately sophisticated
hockey game. By the end of 1966, Baer and his team
had a working prototype of a video game console ready to show members of a
Pentagon review board.
The project leaders beamed with pride as they switched on the device for
those present. The television hummed and slowly
blocks of light came into focus. The members of the Pentagon review board
were not impressed. They felt that insufficient
progress had been made on the project, but acknowledged there was enough
reason to continue research.
It was at this meeting that Baer first expressed his personal theory that a
device such as this could be a very profitable form of
entertainment. The review board, however, felt that the military could
benefit from such a technology more than a consumer, and
decided that the project was to continue under it's "top secret"
classification. It would be four years before a non-military
company would be approached with a similar system.
A Brief History of Home Video Games
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