Ralph Henry Baer was born on March 8, 1922, in Pirmasens, Germany, to a Jewish family, was expelled from school under the Nuremberg Laws, and in 1938 fled with his family to New York City to escape the coming Holocaust. After studying radio and technology, his education was interrupted by service in the U.S. Army during World War II, including Military Intelligence service in France, where he became known as an expert on military small arms. After the war, he attended the American Television Institute of Technology in Chicago and received one of the earliest, and according to the timeline the first, television engineering degrees awarded. He married Dena Whinston in 1952, later moved to Manchester, New Hampshire, to raise their family, and worked at Sanders Associates. There he pursued the idea of using televisions interactively, committing those ideas to paper on September 1, 1966, then receiving funding for a small research and development team and creating early test devices. His Brown Box was licensed to Magnavox, rebranded as the Magnavox Odyssey, and became the first interactive game system, helping give rise to the modern video game industry. Baer also co-created Simon, developed other electronic games, toys, simulators, and interactive devices, earned recognition including Inventor of the Year and the National Medal of Technology, and held more than 150 U.S. and foreign patents before his death at home in Manchester in December 2014.

Photo: Douglas Finney

Photo: Douglas Finney

Photo: Douglas Finney

Photo: Douglas Finney

Photo: Douglas Finney

Manchester, New Hampshire · USA