Ralph Baer: pixel, pixel, cucumber

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Technology has almost ceased to surprise us. We look at cloud gaming with skepticism, and take the coming 5G era for granted. A workstation and hundreds of services in the cloud? Deep Fake? Supercomputers? Ugh, how bor-o-o-ring!

But just recently, some 50 years ago, a simple moving dot on the screen delighted people. No sounds, and instead of a background, a translucent overlay on the screen. Cyberpunk has nothing on that!

Today we will talk about Ralph Baer, ​​the inventor who gave us the world of computer wordpress web design agency entertainment. More than half a century ago, he invented the very concept of a game on the screen, came up with a light gun and... well, let's talk about everything in order.




Early years
Ralf Baer (Bauer) was born on March 8, 1922, in the German city of Rodalben to a Jewish family. His father, Leo, worked as a saddler at a local shoe factory. His mother, Charlotte Kirschbaum, was a housewife. His background left a significant mark on the fate of the future inventor. At the age of 11, because of his roots, Ralf was forced to leave school and continue his education at home.

Several years later, the Baers managed to emigrate to the United States of America - literally a few months before Kristallnacht in 1938, when SA paramilitary units destroyed hundreds of Jewish homes, shops and synagogues throughout Nazi Germany.

In 1940, Baer received a degree in radio engineering and worked in his field for the next three years. In 1943, he was recruited into the army. He served a year in the United States and another two years in military intelligence in England and France. After the war, he was accepted to ATIT, the American Television Institute of Technology, in Chicago. In 1949, he received a bachelor's degree in television engineering and a few years later joined Sanders Associates, an electronics company that carried out orders for the military.

The life of the young engineer was smooth and unhurried. By this time, Ralph had already acquired his own family and, in order to spend as much time as possible with his wife and son, he organized a small laboratory in the basement of the house for overtime work.

It is quite possible that the well-fed life of the "American dream" and household chores would have absorbed the future inventor, if not for one of his early ideas. Back in 1951, as an ATIT graduate, he suggested to his employer, a large technical company Loral Electronics, to build games directly into TVs. More precisely, into a new black-and-white TV, which the company was developing at the time. In his opinion, this would allow the brand to stand out from its competitors. He even came up with a special name for the unoccupied "game" TV channels numbered 3 and 4: LP - Let's play. Then his proposal was rejected, the idea of ​​a game TV seemed absurd to the company's bosses. Baer was advised not to fantasize and focus on his main job. No one wanted to get involved with another ultra-expensive indulgence that no one would buy. Objectively speaking, there were reasons for that. Let's see what "games" on electronic devices were known at that time.