Ralph Henry "Rudolf Heinrich" Baer

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ralph_H._Baer

Ralph Henry Baer (born Rudolf Heinrich Baer; March 8, 1922 – December 6, 2014) was a German-American video game pioneer, inventor, engineer, and was known as "The Father of Video Games" due his many contributions to games and the video game industry in the latter half of the 20th century.[1]

Born in Germany, he and his family fled to America before World War II, where he changed his name and later served the American war effort. Afterwards, he pursued work in electronics, and in the 1960s, came up with the idea of playing games on television screens. He would go on to develop and patent several hardware prototypes, including what would become the first home video game console, the Magnavox Odyssey, and other consoles and consumer game units. In 2004, he was awarded the National Medal of Technology for "his groundbreaking and pioneering creation, development and commercialization of interactive video games, which spawned related uses, applications, and mega-industries in both the entertainment and education realms".[2]

Contents [show] Life[edit] Baer was born in 1922 to Lotte (Kirschbaum) and Leo Bauer,[3] a Jewish family living in Germany, and was originally named Rudolf Heinrich Baer. At age 11, he was expelled from school because of his ancestry and had to go to an all-Jewish school. His father worked in a shoe factory in Pirmasens at the time. Baer's family, fearing increasing persecution, fled from Germany to New York City two months prior to Kristallnacht while Baer was a teenager. Baer would later become a nationalized United States citizen.[4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11]

In the United States, he was self-taught and worked in a factory for a weekly wage of twelve dollars; on seeing an advertisement at a bus station for education in the budding electronics field, he opted to quit his factory job and proceeded to study in the field.[12] He graduated from the National Radio Institute as a radio service technician in 1940. In 1943 he was drafted to fight in World War II, assigned to military intelligence at the United States Army headquarters in London.[13] With his secondary education funded by the G.I. Bill, Baer graduated with a Bachelor of Science degree in Television Engineering (unique at the time) from the American Television Institute of Technology in Chicago in 1949.[12][14][15]

In 1949, Baer went to work as chief engineer for a small electro-medical equipment firm, Wappler, Inc., where he designed and built surgical cutting machines, epilators, and low frequency pulse generating muscle-toning equipment. In 1951, Baer went to work as a senior engineer for Loral Electronics in Bronx, New York, where he designed power line carrier signaling equipment for IBM. From 1952 to 1956, he worked at Transitron, Inc., in New York City as a chief engineer and later as vice president.[16]

He started his own company before joining defense contractor Sanders Associates in Nashua, New Hampshire (now part of BAE Systems Inc.) in 1956, where he stayed until retiring in 1987.[16] Baer's primary responsibility at Sanders was overseeing about 500 engineers in the development of electronic systems for military applications.[17] However, out this work came the concept of a home video game console, and he would go on to create the basis for the first commercial units, among several other patented advances in video games and electronic toys.[18] As he approached retirement, Baer partnered with Bob Pelovitz of Acsiom, LLC, and they invented and marketed toy and game ideas from 1983 until Baer's death.[19]

Baer was a Life Senior Member of Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers.[20] His son, Mark, helped lead the nomination process to elevate him to become an IEEE Life Fellow, the highest level of membership within the organization.[21]

Family and death[edit] Baer had married Dena Whinston in 1952, who died in 2006. They had three children during their marriage, and at the time of Baer's death, he had four grandchildren.[12] Baer died at his home in Manchester, New Hampshire on December 6, 2014, according to family and friends close to him.[12][22]

Inventions[edit]

The "Brown Box" prototype at display at the Smithsonian Institution Baer was considered to be the inventor of video games; in 1966 Baer while an employee at Sanders started to explore the possibility of playing games on television screens. In a 2007 interview, Baer said that he recognized that the price reduction of owning a television set at the time had opened a large potential market for other applications, considering that various military groups had identified ways of using television for their purposes.[23] Upon coming up with creating a game using the television screen, he wrote a four page document which with he was able to convince one of his supervisors to proceed. He was given US$2,500 and the aid of two other engineers, Bill Harrison and Bill Rusch, developing the "Brown Box" console video game system, named as such due to the brown tape he used to wrap the units to simulate wood grain.[12][17][24] Baer recounted that in an early meeting with a patent examiner and his attorney to patent one of the prototypes, he had set up the prototype on a television in the examiner's office and "within 15 minutes, every examiner on the floor of that building was in that office wanting to play the game".[12]

Baer began seeking a buyer for the system, turning to various television manufacturers who did not see interest in the unit.[12] In 1971, it was licensed to Magnavox, and after being renamed Magnavox Odyssey, the console was released to the public in 1972.[24] For a time it was Sanders' most profitable line, selling approximately 300,000 units, though many in the company looked down on game development.[12] Baer is credited for creating the first light gun and game for home television use, sold grouped with a game expansion pack for the Odyssey, and collectively known as the Shooting Gallery. The light gun itself was the first peripheral for a video game console.[25]

Baer is credited with developing the pattern-matching game Simon. The success of the Odyssey led to competition from other companies, in particular Atari, Inc., led by Nolan Bushnell at the time. Bushnell saw Baer's successful devices and was able to create the first arcade machine in 1972 based on Baer's Table Tennis idea, resulting in Pong. Sanders and Magnavox successfully sued Atari for patent infringement over Baer's original ideas, but Bushnell would continue to push to lead Atari to become a leader in both home and arcade video games. This led to a lengthy conflict between Baer and Bushnell over who was the true "father of video games"; Baer was willing to concede this to Bushnell, though noted that Bushnell "has been telling the same nonsensical stories for 40 years".[13] Baer would help both Magnavox and later Coleco to develop competitive units to Atari's products, including the Odyssey 100 and the Odyssey2.[13] Ultimately, the industry came to name Baer as the father of the home video game console, while crediting Bushnell with creating the concept of the arcade machine;[26][27] Upon Baer's death, Bushnell stated that Baer's "contributions to the rise of videogames should not be forgotten".[28]

Baer is also credited with co-developing three popular electronic games.[29] Baer, along with Howard J. Morrison, developed Simon (1978) and its sequel Super Simon (1979) for Milton Bradley, electronic pattern-matching games that were immensely popular through the late 1990s. The US patent for Simon, Pat No. 4,207,087 was obtained in 1980 by patent counsel for Marvin Glass and Associates, Robert J. Schneider, a managing partner with the firm of Mason, Kolehmainen, Rathburn and Wyss. Schneider is currently Co-Chair of the Intellectual Property Department of Taft, Stettinius & Hollister LLP. [30] Baer also developed a similar pattern-matching game "Maniac" for the Ideal Toy Company (1979) on his own, though the game was not as popular as Simon; Baer considered that Maniac was "really hard to play" and thus not as popular as his earlier game.[31]

In 2006, Baer donated all his hardware prototypes and documents to the Smithsonian Institution.[24] He continued to tinker in electronics after the death of his wife through at least 2013.[32] By the time of his death, Baer had over 150 patents in his name;[33] in addition to those related to video games, he had patents for electronic greeting cards and for tracking systems for submarines.[17]

Awards[edit] In addition to being considered "The Father of Video Games", Baer was recognized as a pioneer in the video game field. His accolades include the G-Phoria Legend Award (2005),[34] the IEEE Masaru Ibuka Consumer Electronics Award (2008),[35] the Game Developers Conference Developers Choice "Pioneer" award (2008),[1] and the IEEE Edison Medal (2014).[36]

On February 13, 2006, Baer was awarded the National Medal of Technology by President George W. Bush in honor of his "groundbreaking and pioneering creation, development and commercialization of interactive video games".[37][38] On April 1, 2010, Baer was inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame at a ceremony at the United States Department of Commerce in Washington, D.C.[39]

Obituary: from: http://www.legacy.com/obituaries/unionleader/obituary.aspx?n=ralph-...

Manchester - Ralph Henry Baer, a longtime resident of Manchester, passed away peacefully, surrounded by family on Dec. 6, 2014.Born in Pirmasens, Germany on March 8, 1922 to Lotte (Kirschbaum) and Leo Baer, Ralph lived a life that was extraordinary and remarkable in so many ways.Ralph had a playful spirit and sense of adventure. You can see him playing on recreations of his original video games system with individuals and notables across the globe. With various friends and family, Ralph traveled all over North America, as well as to New Zealand, and after many years of absence, all around Europe and to his nation of birth, Germany. He is survived by his loving children, a daughter, Nancy Baer and her husband, Ador Yano; son, James and wife, Andrea; and son Mark and wife, Christina. He absolutely adored his grandchildren, all Baers, who are Alexander, Danielle, Jonathan and Lizzy. He was preceded in death by the love of his life, Dena Whinston Baer, without whom he has acknowledged he could not have done all he did.After escaping the Holocaust by leaving for the United States just before Kirstallnacht with his parents and sister Jane, Ralph settled in New York where he began his amazing career in the field of electronics. He served in the U.S. Army during World War II. After attending MI training at Camp Ritchie Maryland he then served in Europe where he eventually help assemble a group that traveled throughout the continent gathering, organizing and training other GIs and command staff concerning foreign armaments. A gifted engineer by nature, he and his group, which included numerous foreign-born GI's, eventually collected many tons of equipment. Ralph's books, technical renditions and documents in this concern eventually found its way into the Smithsonian Museum in Washington, D.C., and many other places. That was a pattern that was to be repeated throughout his extraordinary life.Subsequent to his return, Ralph attended college on the GI bill, which was no mean feat after having been thrown out of school in Germany with other Jewish students, graduating in the United States, after studying under Lee DeForest in 1949 with a Bachelor of Science in television engineering, the first one given in the United States. That too would be a pattern often repeated. After returning from the war, Ralph met and married the love of his life, Dena Whinston, with whom he had three children, James, Mark and Nancy. Dena passed in 2006.Ralph's employment with electronics firms began at Loral, which was a relatively early radar developer and then moved with Transitron from New York to Manchester. Ralph then began working and became chief engineer for Sanders, now BAE, in Nashua, where he eventually was given their highest honor of Fellow. He worked there as his full-time job working mostly on defense-related matters at first, including advanced radar countermeasures, calibrations and a myriad of other advanced systems. On the side, in his own skunk works, Ralph began working on what he then termed as "television games" in the mid-1960s, from which came the document entitled Disclosure Data TVG(ames) of 1 September 1966, which led to the seminal patents for video games. Eventually, that side work became part of an effort at Sanders resulting in the creation of a unit now known as "The Brown Box," which was the first video game console, now part of the permanent collection at the American History Museum at the Smithsonian. You can see Ralph playing on the original machine with his longtime friend and tech Bill Harrison in a charming black and white movie on YouTube. After much effort, Ralph and his colleagues at Sanders Associates found a licensee in the Magnavox Company, which came out with the very first video game system called The Odyssey, in the very early 1970s. The Odyssey was to go on to sell many hundreds of thousands of units and the modern video game industry was born. All of the major manufacturers of video games at the time became their licensees.While consulting for Sanders, and after retiring from there in 1987, Ralph formed his own business, Ralph H. Baer Consultants, through which he created or helped create hundreds of electronic games, toys and novelties, the most notable of which was Simon, a game of memory, which remains in production today. Showing his creative side, Ralph helped infuse that creation with the four notes of the bugle, an addition that he credits with helping make the device an enduring success.In addition, Ralph created or helped develop such diverse items as talking greeting cards, talking welcome mats, interactive talking stuffed animals, the electronic light gun, game and military simulation machines, a split keyboard organ and hundreds of other items. He was simply a wizard with electronics and had the unique ability to match that technical mastery with a creativity of extraordinary breadth eventually amassing over 150 U.S. and foreign patents. As a result of his immense contributions, his works are in museums all across the planet. In addition to the Smithsonian, Ralph's works and reproductions of his works are in the American Computer Museum in Bozeman, Mont., the Strong Museum of Play in Rochester, N.Y., the Museum of the Moving Image and the Museum of Modern Art, both of New York, the Computerspiele Museum in and the Nixdorf Museum in Germany, and in venues and museums in Japan, the Netherlands and elsewhere. Ralph was also the author of the book "Videogames, In the Beginning," and has written extensively for technical and non-technical publications. He also loved to work and mentor young engineers and inventors.He is a recipient in February 2006 of the National Medal of Technology, given to him at a White House ceremony by the President. He has been inducted into the United State's Patent and Trademark Inventors Hall of Fame and has received many awards including the Ibuka Masura Comsumer Electronics Award and the Edison Award from the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, an organization that recently named him as a Fellow. Ralph received an honorary Doctorate of Law from the University of New Hampshire School of Law in 2007. He was presented a plaque from Guinness World Records recognizing him as the inventor of the first home-video game system and has been recognized by the Carnegie Corporation among the "Immigrants: The Pride of America" in July 2014. Ralph's lab will be given a special place at the Smithsonian Institute scheduled for opening in July of 2015.Over the years, Ralph enjoyed sailing and even helped build some of his boats, which he sailed in many lakes but especially at Lake Massabesic. He also enjoyed playing his harmonic and listening to and whistling classical music. - See more at: http://www.legacy.com/obituaries/unionleader/obituary.aspx?n=ralph-...