In 1966, Ralph H. Baer came up with the concept of a "television gaming apparatus." This device included both a chase game and a video tennis game and could be attached to a normal television set. There were about 40 million TV sets in the U.S. homes alone in 1966, to say nothing of many more millions of TV sets in the rest of the world. They were literally begging to be used for something other than watching commercial television broadcasts!

It took several years and numerous false starts, but in 1970, Baer showed the game to Magnavox, which signed a licensing agreement the following year. Then, on January 27, 1972, Magnavox launched Baer's "Brown Box" technology as the Odyssey video game console - the world's first home video game system. Priced at $100, the Odyssey utilized simple black-and-white graphics, and enhanced by plastic overlays for the television screen. Read more about the beginnings of video gaming industry at the History section.

See the first Pong game ever recorded!

Today in Geek History

Atari announced Pong in 1972. 40 years later, it still hasn't lost its charm. It is Nov. 29 in the year 2012 and that means the ground-breaking, ball-bouncing, interactive game of Pong officially turns 40 years old.

Happy Birthday PONG !

It may be the 40th anniversary of the Magnavox Odyssey game but it's about the 90th of birthday of mine….hard to believe. …and I'm still up-to-my ears in work.

I am still involved in inventing, designing hardware and writing software for electronic toys and games and have no intention of stopping unless my clock winds down… which will probably happen sooner rather than later.

I haven't been involved in videogame development since the last time, about four years ago, when I designed and licensed  a substitute for a DDR mat that required no mat and talked wirelessly to the game box. Unfortunately, my licensee forgot to romance the potential customer at the required management level and the product dropped dead despite the fact that the licensee had spent  a million dollars on its development.

Current videogame consoles, TV sets, laptops, iBooks, iPads and iPhones are nothing if not complete magic... and I am happy to see that Apple has finally developed software that lets us port MSFT Word files with photos and movies to iPad and iPhone.

I have been preaching the need for interactive tablets for textbooks and other form of books (like travel books) for 25 years and now THAT has happened… Games are just about one last step away from total realism… 3D, which I have been associated with for 50 years (I have a collection of family photos of thousands of 3-D slides) is also coming along rapidly.

Things are moving so fast it makes one's head spin.

Best, Ralph Baer

See a video of Ralph H. Baer speaking at "History of Video Games Timeline" launch event in Berlin - 29 July 2009

Pong Machine  for Commodore C64

The old ATARI classic PONG on your Commodore C64 - Real retro gaming!

Download at
noname.c64.org

Produced by Technische Maschinenfabrik
Release Date : 9 January 2011

For programmers and developers: A jQuery plugin to generate the classic Pong game on your web pages. Fully customizable and cross browsers compatible.

Requires jQuery 1.3. Demo : http://www.geoffray.be/lab/pong/