Technomaly

So I’ve played Simon Says, Pong and Duck Hunt, and hundreds of stupid Internet games for a good portion of my life.

Little did I know that the same person was responsible for just about every facet of gaming there ever will be: Ralph Baer.

I took some time and watched this great interview with Baer, who described his many, many groundbreaking inventions. (It’s 17 minutes, but well worth a lunch break.)

Baer, a German Jew who escaped the country before the Nazi’s came to power, began his career as a radio technician. But after working with military intelligence, earning a bachelors of science and a few stints as a designer, he started his own company with defense-electronics in mind.

While he was working on defense applications, he took a noted detour and created the first video game console. He then added a light gun to the console and whipped up a little game called Simon.

If that weren’t enough, Baer also designed a way for people to play games, such as his Pong, through cable lines. Nobody, sadly, thought much of it and decided not to buy his invention, delaying console-to-console gaming by decades.

He created a number of other toys, gadgets and gizmos up until his retirement in 1987.

In 2006, Baer was awarded the National Medal of Technology by George W. Bush for his work on video games.

Is Baer the government’s answer to keeping intelligent, technology-savvy people from doing anything productive? Probably not, but he is truly a genius who was decades ahead of his time and we can thank him for basically inventing video games — despite the fact that our thumbs, brains and time is hurting.

It’s a wonder that he ever existed, let alone is still kicking. Nobody in the sphere of video games comes close to his level of genius.