Ralph Baer, the engineer popularly known as the “father of video games,” died at his home in the US city of Manchester this weekend at age 92 confirmed his family.
“Sanders Associates granted a license for the system developed by Baer to Magnavox”
A Baer came up with the idea of designing a “box” that would allow Americans to play on their TVs in 1966, while waiting at the bus terminal Port Authority of New York that came a friend.
“The purpose of my experiment was to create a device that could connect to any TV and play interesting games,” he wrote in his book “Video games at first” published in 2005.
Baer and the company he worked for, Sanders Associates, applied for the first patent for video games 1971.
Sanders Associates granted a license for the system developed by Baer to Magnavox, which sold 130,000 units in the first video game home games in 1972.
Baer, an engineer of Jewish origin who came to America with his family fleeing Germany Nazi, was honored by the White House in 2006 with the National Medal of Technology, and entered the Hall of Fame of Inventors US in 2010.
The console that designed transformed the role of television and laid the foundations of an industry that generated billions of dollars last year.
Born in March 1922 in a Jewish family in the German city of Pirmasens, Baer grew up in the New York borough of the Bronx, where his parents settled after arriving in United States in 1938.
Baer became interested in electronic engineering during his teens and spent the first years of his professional career developing equipment medical, speakers and other technological systems for commercial and military purposes.
He is survived by his two sons, James and Mark, his daughter Nancy Baer and four grandchildren. His wife, Dena Whinston, with whom he was married 53 years died in 2006.
© EFE
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