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00:00Hello, I'm Ralph Baer.
00:03You may not know his name.
00:05If you look into Psychic Media Britannica, you'll find that Nolan Bushnell is the event for video games.
00:11So love you.
00:12You may not know what he did.
00:14As he's thinking about this, he comes up with this, hey, you know, I wonder if you could play a
00:19game.
00:20Basically, that's the genesis of the video game industry.
00:24I think what Ralph Baer did was brilliant.
00:27But his impact on the world of gaming is immeasurable.
00:31He invented video games, the patents in his name.
00:34You can't deny that.
00:36This is the forgotten story of Ralph Baer.
00:42Boom, I got you.
01:02The story of Ralph Baer begins before personal computers, video game consoles, and the Internet.
01:09I was born in Germany in 1922.
01:11I lived there until 38.
01:13He grew up Jewish in Germany, which wasn't a good thing to be there.
01:21They kicked him out of public school because he was Jewish.
01:23He had to go to a Jewish school.
01:25But he was old enough to know boys who made it into the Hitler Youth and to know that things
01:31were not right.
01:37My father was a representative for shoe factories in the town that I was born in, in Germany.
01:43In school, we played soccer, of course.
01:45Every European kid played soccer.
01:48I did some swimming, that's about all.
01:52His family escaped Germany, which was two months, three months before Crystal Night,
01:56which was the night of broken glass, which symbolized the beginning of the Holocaust.
02:00So they got out just in time.
02:03Well, actually, it was very benign.
02:04When you think of escaping Nazi Germany, you might get visions of clandestinely crossing a border.
02:11It's nothing like that.
02:12I got in a train, stayed for several days with distant relatives of my fathers.
02:16My mother and my sister came the day afterwards.
02:19And two or three days later, we got on a steamship and sailed across the ocean.
02:28He came to America and got involved in self-schooling.
02:34He was a very smart man.
02:36He was largely self-educated.
02:37We arrived in New York and went to work in a factory,
02:41making $12 a week for $10 a day, half a day Saturdays,
02:46out of which I spent a dollar and a quarter for a correspondence course.
02:50Became a radio technician, began to do all the service work for three radio stores in New York City,
02:57fixing and repairing and installing antennas of early television sets, early FM sets.
03:04And in 1943, Uncle Sam knocked on my door and I got drafted.
03:09And within months, I was in England.
03:11By that time, I'd been trained as an interrogator of prisoners of war.
03:14And I was part of an MIT military intelligence team that went over to Europe in a convoy,
03:20zigzagging across the Atlantic.
03:21Next thing I know is I'm doing the syllabus.
03:23We're teaching G.I.s to recognize German weapons, handle German weapons,
03:29recognize German uniforms, heavy weapons.
03:33I had a whole museum full of hardware.
03:38He was on duty in England.
03:42It was pouring rain outside, and he wound up in pneumonia.
03:45He wound up in the hospital.
03:46And the day he wound up in the hospital, the rest of his troop was shipped to Normandy.
03:55After the war, Baer attends classes at the American Technical Institute of Television.
04:00Ralph completed a program in Chicago, a trade school,
04:03and he was one of the first people to have a degree in television engineering.
04:08Back then, it wasn't a degree nobody got in.
04:10He was the first.
04:11With his new degree in hand, he steps into the budding world of electronics.
04:15In 1950, Ralph began working for L'Oreal,
04:18which is a TV manufacturer in New York City.
04:20One of the first projects that his manager had him make
04:24was build the best TV set you can make,
04:26better than anyone else can make one.
04:28Another guy and I sat in the screen room for a year
04:31and built a set from scratch.
04:33Everything from the front end to the tail end.
04:35My job was building the frequency sections,
04:39the power supply, the flexion circuitry, and all that good jazz.
04:44And Ralph got this idea to employ some kind of game in the TV.
04:48He didn't know what kind of game, definitely not a video game,
04:52but something to make TV interactive.
04:54I looked at what we were doing,
04:57and especially at how we were testing the set.
04:59To set up a set in those days,
05:02there was test equipment to set up sets
05:05so they would leave the factory properly adjusted.
05:07that those test equipment could produce vertical and horizontal bars,
05:12and these bars could move around.
05:13It was kind of fun to do it.
05:15I said, why don't we build something like that into a TV set?
05:18You make a game of it.
05:20But his management, they didn't like the idea.
05:23I proposed that to the chief engineer,
05:25and he said, well, you're already two months behind schedule.
05:29Forget it.
05:30Build a goddamn set and get it over with.
05:33Ralph Baer's idea for an interactive game
05:35built into a television doesn't take off.
05:38But little does he know
05:39that he is on the brink of making history.
05:41Get me. Come get me.
05:43I'm the Red Baron.
05:44I'm going to get you.
05:45Boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom.
05:50Fifteen years after working as an engineer for L'Oreal,
05:54Ralph Baer finds himself working as a manager
05:56at Sanders Electronics.
05:58I'm in charge of a division that, by this time,
06:00has grown to some 500 engineers.
06:02I don't have much time for anything
06:04except being a chaplain.
06:08And taking care of people problems.
06:10So I build a little skunk works
06:12in a room off to the side
06:14that nobody knows anything about,
06:15so I can do a little private R&D work.
06:18While he's on a business trip,
06:21Baer revisits an old idea.
06:23I'm in New York,
06:23waiting for somebody to come in to join me.
06:26You have Ralph Baer sitting in a bus stop,
06:29thinking,
06:29what can you do on a television set?
06:32Besides,
06:32watch television.
06:33All of a sudden,
06:34he had what he likes to say,
06:35one of his eureka moments.
06:38Clay comes up with this,
06:40I wonder if you could put a local signal on that TV
06:43that would be a controllable signal.
06:45And I made some notes on a spiral pad
06:47that I sat down the next morning,
06:49September 1st, 1966.
06:51I wrote a four-page paper
06:53that lays it all out.
06:54Describes the concept of playing games
06:57on the home television set
06:58or with a monitor.
07:00Describes playing stuff
07:02that comes out of a box,
07:03like sports games,
07:04or quiz games,
07:05or board games.
07:06Baer quickly starts work
07:08on his new idea.
07:09By October 20th, 1966,
07:11he finishes the first prototype
07:12of his game box.
07:14We built a piece of equipment
07:16that allowed us to move
07:16a spot around the screen.
07:19They got a game working
07:20called what they call Fox and Hounds,
07:22which is just a chase game.
07:23One dot chased another dot.
07:24This was interactive TV.
07:26No one else did it before.
07:27The object was to make something
07:28that would be fun, right?
07:30While chasing a spot around the screen
07:31was fun enough,
07:33but not for very long.
07:34So I had a gun.
07:35We converted that,
07:37and then we started shooting at the screen.
07:39Danny, he spent the next few days
07:40talking to his management
07:42to convince them
07:43to go ahead with this idea.
07:45So the next thing I knew
07:46was I was going to 10th Street
07:48for the whole board of directors,
07:49and the damn way
07:49I had to go off well.
07:51This is a chase game?
07:52All right, let's play.
07:53Come and get me.
07:55The reaction of the board of director
07:57was very enthusiastic.
07:59It was some feat that he did it,
08:00because Sanders is a military contractor.
08:03They don't deal with consumer products,
08:05but yet they gave him the go-ahead for this
08:07by giving him $2,000 in seed money.
08:09Oops, you got me.
08:10And basically,
08:12that's the genesis of the video game industry.
08:18You got me.
08:20End of the game.
08:21In 1967,
08:23Bayer gets a helping hand.
08:24Bill Harrison,
08:25at the time he worked for me,
08:27was probably in his late 20s.
08:29He was joined by a guy
08:31in the name of Bill Rush.
08:32Bill Rush understood fun.
08:36He comes up with ways to make it a little more fun.
08:38So pretty soon,
08:39they have a little block
08:40that you can pass back and forth on the screen.
08:44The goal is to try and hit it with your paddles,
08:46to catch it.
08:47Well, what if instead of catching it,
08:50we bat it back and forth
08:51and have like a tennis game?
08:53We built several more boxes
08:55that were progressively more efficient.
08:58By the time we got up to number six,
09:00we had handball games.
09:02It's no longer a net.
09:02It's the wall.
09:03And we had a volleyball game,
09:05which was a side view with a half-height net.
09:07We also had gun games again.
09:09But we made a big mistake.
09:11We didn't stop at six.
09:13We had so many ideas what else to do.
09:15We went to number seven,
09:16which turned into a much larger unit,
09:18which everybody knows as the brown box
09:20because it was covered
09:21with brown wood-grained adhesive paper.
09:25The executives from Sanders got together
09:27and played it.
09:27Everybody loved it.
09:28And then the next step was,
09:29what do we do with this?
09:32What you're dealing with
09:33is somebody who's looking at appliances.
09:35That's in everybody's home.
09:37He's trying to think of something
09:38that will actually reach the common mound.
09:41There was real concern on my part
09:42that having spent the money,
09:44I wasn't going to go anywhere
09:46because it wasn't obvious what to do with it.
09:48What store?
09:49Where?
09:50Who's going to build it?
09:51The first idea was to try to interact with cable.
09:54So they brought down Irvin Khan,
09:56who was Mr. Cable at the time,
09:58from Teleprompter.
09:59Their idea was to deliver this game through cable.
10:02And then I brought up one of the two guys
10:05who invented the Teleprompter.
10:07And they were then the largest cable company
10:09in the country.
10:10Saw the demo, was quite impressed.
10:12Went back to New York
10:13and caused the president
10:14to come up two weeks later.
10:16We got into a negotiation,
10:18our own technical plan,
10:19somebody else did a business plan.
10:20We spent quite a bit of time on all that.
10:22And then it all went down the chute
10:25because there was a money crunch at the time.
10:28At the time,
10:29the cable TV industry is still new.
10:31And Teleprompter decides not to risk
10:33supporting this strange new device.
10:35And I was back to square one.
10:37So I know what the hell was I going to do.
10:39Ralph Baer has his game box ready to go.
10:42Unfortunately,
10:43no one seems to know what to do with it.
10:45But Baer isn't ready to give up yet.
10:52Ralph Baer has created the world's first
10:54home video game console,
10:56dubbed the Brown Box.
10:57Now, he must figure out how to sell it.
11:00Ralph was interested in connecting his box
11:02up to a TV set,
11:04which 40 million people in the United States
11:06had televisions.
11:07You just connect with 10% of them,
11:09you have a hit product.
11:10Then it occurred to me,
11:11it was like a flash out of the dark.
11:15There are TV manufacturers all over the country.
11:17They have production lines
11:19that can handle the kind of stuff
11:20that's inside of my game hardware.
11:23So it's a logical place to go to.
11:25So they started calling
11:27different television manufacturers,
11:29Zenith, Sylvania.
11:31Everybody was quite impressed.
11:32But they weren't impressed enough
11:33to move immediately,
11:35except for RCA and Jerry Martin,
11:38who was in charge of television production.
11:40And when we got done demonstrating,
11:42everybody still sat around the table
11:44looking semi-unfriendly,
11:46except for Jerry Martin, he said.
11:48It's a go.
11:49Then Bill Enders with RCA
11:51moved to MagnaBox.
11:53First thing he did was tell people,
11:54hey, there's this product I saw.
11:56Why don't we take a look at it?
11:57In 1969,
11:58MagnaBox licenses the technology
12:00behind the Brown Box.
12:01And in 1971,
12:02they released the world's first
12:04home video game console,
12:07The Odyssey.
12:08If you looked inside,
12:09you'd find very few differences
12:11in the Brown Box.
12:12The Odyssey,
12:13which was the first home video game,
12:15set the standards
12:15of what came afterwards.
12:17It had two controllers.
12:19It had plug-in cards.
12:20Although the games themselves
12:22were built into the console,
12:24it was capable of playing
12:2512 different games
12:26by changing the cartridges around.
12:28It had an add-on.
12:29You can get a light rifle.
12:31But the launch of The Odyssey
12:32doesn't go as well
12:34as Bayer hopes.
12:37MagnaBox released The Odyssey
12:39in May of 1972.
12:42The distribution,
12:43it was kind of slow
12:44for a number of reasons.
12:45Now,
12:46Ralph envisioned Odyssey
12:47to be a game in a box
12:49for 20 bucks.
12:51MagnaBox didn't share his vision.
12:53They made him a much bigger,
12:55more elaborate,
12:56more expensive product.
12:57They saw a $100 product.
12:59$100 was a lot of money.
13:00That wasn't a toy.
13:02People didn't want to experiment
13:03with a $100 toy.
13:06I can only imagine
13:08trying to explain to somebody
13:09this whole idea
13:10of that you play a game
13:11on a screen.
13:12It's just like,
13:13what?
13:14They gave the impression
13:15that it could only hook up
13:16to MagnaBox television sets.
13:19Most people who didn't have
13:20a MagnaBox television set
13:22didn't even bother to look at it.
13:23You had all these games
13:25with Odyssey,
13:26but they were a nightmare.
13:27The technology wasn't there yet.
13:29But then you had these overlays,
13:31these static overlays
13:32that you put on your television.
13:33So if you're playing hockey,
13:36you put a blue overlay on it.
13:38If you're playing football,
13:39you put a green overlay.
13:41It's a lot of bother.
13:43It just didn't catch on.
13:44The future isn't looking good
13:46for the Odyssey,
13:47but Bear's console
13:48eventually gets
13:49an unexpected boost
13:50thanks to a man
13:51named Nolan Bushnell.
13:53Once MagnaBox got into
13:54pre-production and production,
13:56they were ready to show it
13:58to the world
13:58and travel the country.
13:59They're trying to show people
14:01what Odyssey is,
14:02and they're holding these
14:03kind of Magnavox
14:06internal trade shows.
14:08And they got to do one
14:09in Berlin game.
14:11Nolan Bushnell,
14:13who at the time
14:13was working
14:14for a small arcade game
14:16manufacturer,
14:17he hears about this,
14:18and he goes,
14:20and he even gets
14:21to play Odyssey.
14:24I thought the games
14:25were pretty poor.
14:27I thought the technology
14:28was very interesting,
14:30that they were able
14:31to do what they could do
14:33for the price that they had
14:34at that point in time.
14:35And he played the ping-pong game,
14:37of course.
14:38In retrospect,
14:38he says he wasn't very impressed,
14:41and I couldn't understand
14:42why he wasn't impressed.
14:43What Nolan Bushnell does next
14:45will be the subject
14:46of many debates
14:47in the coming years.
14:49Al Cohen built
14:50a ping-pong game,
14:51and they called it
14:52Pong.
14:53It was out there,
14:54and we knew of it.
14:55And video game business,
14:57yes,
14:58is often flying.
15:03It was a real
15:04cultural phenomenon.
15:05So that was like a regular,
15:06just part of the culture.
15:07Everybody saw this thing
15:09and wanted to try it out.
15:10Everybody had heard of it.
15:11It's like,
15:11oh, there's that Pong thing
15:12I've heard about.
15:14I believe that we were able
15:16to help Odyssey
15:18a great deal
15:20by the success
15:21of the arcade game.
15:22And now all of a sudden,
15:24people realize,
15:25well,
15:26they were hooked on Pong.
15:27By buying the Odyssey,
15:28they could have Pong at home.
15:30The popularity of Pong
15:31helped spur sales
15:32of the Odyssey.
15:33And by 1975,
15:35350,000 units are sold.
15:37Still,
15:37it's not enough
15:38for Magnavox.
15:39But thanks to
15:40Ralph Baer's detailed
15:41record-keeping,
15:41Magnavox will eventually
15:42make millions
15:43off of the Odyssey.
15:48By 1974,
15:49Pong is a full-blown phenomenon,
15:51and Nolan Bushnell
15:52is reaping the benefits.
15:55Meanwhile,
15:56things aren't going so well
15:57for Ralph Baer
15:58and Magnavox.
15:59But Baer's
15:59meticulous record-keeping
16:00ends up saving the day.
16:02Atari was very successful
16:04at Pong.
16:04At the same time,
16:05Magnavox is really
16:07limping along
16:08with their Odyssey.
16:09And somebody says,
16:10hey, you know,
16:11that's kind of
16:12using our technology there.
16:14Why don't we sue them?
16:16Around 1968,
16:18Ralph applied for a patent
16:19for his work.
16:21Every stage
16:21stage of creation
16:22for Ralph Baer
16:23is meticulously recorded.
16:27Ralph doesn't do anything
16:28unless he records it
16:29for lots of reasons,
16:30for legal purposes,
16:31also because he wants
16:32to see what he did.
16:34He is a quintessential engineer.
16:36Ralph Baer got a patent
16:37on one of the most
16:38basic things.
16:39The patent really involves
16:40how you tell interactions
16:42on screen,
16:43how you tell that
16:44the bullet hit the spaceship,
16:47and therefore,
16:48something has to happen
16:49at that location
16:50and telling those interactions
16:51what they managed to patent,
16:53which is the basis
16:54for most of these games.
16:56Well, every video game
16:57that came out
16:57in the early 70s,
16:58it involved the business
16:59of interaction
17:00between manually controlled
17:02and machine controlled.
17:03Plus, Atari's Pong
17:04are finished
17:04on a lot of Ralph's patents.
17:06Sanders and Magnavox
17:08did what they had to do.
17:08They took Atari to court.
17:10At that time,
17:10we were making money
17:11hand over fist
17:12and saw that
17:14as a huge distraction.
17:17There was then
17:18an offer for settlement.
17:19I looked at how much money
17:21I was spending on attorneys
17:23versus how much
17:24I could settle it for,
17:26and I decided,
17:27let's settle it,
17:28get it out of the way,
17:29move on next.
17:30So we got a paid-up royalty
17:32worldwide.
17:33In effect,
17:34Atari was Magnavox's
17:36first licensing.
17:37The real benefit,
17:38and it was a huge benefit,
17:40wasn't from selling the product.
17:42It was from licensing
17:43the technology.
17:44Baer's patent
17:45is a legal juggernaut.
17:46Game companies
17:47are faced with two choices,
17:49fight Magnavox in court
17:50and lose,
17:51or pay to license
17:52the technology.
17:53Magnavox's strategy
17:54was very clear.
17:55They wanted to
17:57get the big dog
17:59to settle,
18:00and then they'd go around
18:00and they'd make money
18:01on everybody else.
18:02Is this exhibit 62
18:04what's referred to
18:05as the brown box?
18:07Yes, that's it.
18:08We won lawsuits.
18:09It wasn't even so much
18:11a question of
18:11who invented video games first.
18:13They simply
18:14infringed certain claims.
18:16If any part of that's
18:17infringed,
18:17they owe you something.
18:19We won every one of them.
18:20Were you aware
18:20of any video games?
18:23I object to that question.
18:24He has no reason to believe
18:25he's not aware
18:26of a lot of things.
18:27Please do not testify
18:28before your witness.
18:29I'm not testifying.
18:30I'm complaining
18:30about your approach.
18:31As long as the patents
18:32held out,
18:34Magnavox just still
18:35continued making money
18:36through 1984 and 1985
18:38when Nintendo and Sega
18:39entered the market.
18:40All of them paid royalties
18:41to Magnavox and Sanders.
18:43Magnavox finally has
18:45the profit they've been seeking.
18:46But as they win
18:47one legal battle
18:48after another,
18:49they find themselves
18:50losing the war
18:51in the stores.
18:52In 1977,
18:54Atari came out
18:55with the Atari
18:56video computer system,
18:57the BCS,
18:58later known as
18:59the Atari 2600.
19:00Then, of course,
19:01Magnavox had to compete.
19:02Odyssey,
19:04video game one.
19:05So they came out
19:05with the Odyssey 2,
19:07which had a keyboard
19:08built into it,
19:09but they just couldn't
19:10keep up with Atari.
19:12They later made plans
19:13around 1983
19:14to come out
19:15with an Odyssey 3,
19:16but they finally
19:17scrapped that
19:18and then they just
19:18got out of the
19:19business altogether.
19:21Ralph Baer
19:22eventually leaves
19:22Magnavox.
19:23For the next few years,
19:25he will go on
19:25to create a collection
19:26of electronic games
19:27and toys.
19:29Baer never returns
19:30to the home console
19:31business that he
19:32helped birth,
19:33and as time goes by,
19:34his legacy
19:35begins to fade.
19:36This is not
19:37what I had in my life.
19:39Unfortunately,
19:40Ralph does not
19:41receive the recognition
19:42that he deserves.
19:43Nolan Bushnell
19:44did such an incredible
19:45job with the media
19:46that people think
19:48of him as
19:48the inventor
19:49of video games,
19:49and it's a shame.
19:51I think what
19:51Ralph Baer did
19:53was brilliant.
19:54The technology
19:55he had at the time
19:57was really neat.
19:58I think that he
20:00was an engineer
20:01and not a very
20:02good game player.
20:02I think that
20:03was the problem.
20:05If you look
20:05into the Encyclopedia
20:06Britannica,
20:07you'll find that
20:07Nolan Bushnell
20:08is the inventor
20:08of video games.
20:11C'est la vie.
20:13He should get
20:14the recognition
20:14that he deserves.
20:16He invented video games.
20:18The patent's
20:18in his name.
20:19You can't deny that.
20:21And, you know,
20:21he's not even
20:22looking for money.
20:23What Ralph Baer
20:23really would like
20:25people to say
20:26is,
20:27hey, thank you
20:27for inventing video games.
20:28He just wants
20:30credit for what he did,
20:31which is reasonable
20:31because he did a lot.
20:34But Baer
20:34isn't completely forgotten.
20:36In 1979,
20:37he's named
20:38inventor of the year
20:39by the state of New York.
20:40And in 1980,
20:41he received the same honor
20:42from New Hampshire.
20:44As the game industry
20:45continues to grow
20:46and thrive,
20:47its roots
20:48can still be traced back
20:49to the work
20:50of Ralph Baer.
20:51Ralph's contributions
20:52to the work
20:53of video games
20:53is immense.
20:55Everything that was
20:56in the brown box
20:57is still around today.
20:59The controllers,
21:00the light guns,
21:00the interchangeable games.
21:02He doesn't consider
21:03himself a big deal.
21:04To him,
21:05he's Ralph Baer.
21:05He's an engineer.
21:06So what?
21:06I'm Ralph Baer.
21:07That's the type
21:08of person he is.
21:09Video games are,
21:10you know,
21:10hands down
21:10the most important thing
21:11I did.
21:12Well, it's not
21:13the most important thing.
21:14I think the most important
21:15things I did
21:15was have a nice family
21:16and creative kids
21:18and nice blankets
21:19who are up to their eyeballs
21:21into video games.
21:23So I've had a good run,
21:24no complaints.
21:26Thanks for seeing
21:27me.
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