By 1951, he [Ralph Bear] was working at Loral, then a small military contractor. He was given the job of building the "best TV set in the world." At that early date, Baer was already thinking about building TV sets with games built in.

"Somewhere along the line I suggested that we might include some novel features like adding some form of TV game! That got the predictable negative reaction, and that was the end of that!"

...he [Baer] scribbled some notes in a bus station in New York, and on Sept. 1, 1966, he wrote a four-page paper outlining his ideas for a TV game system.

To make things appear on the screen, he sent the signal through the antenna input and used channels 3 and 4, which are still used today for video game consoles attached to the TV. Bob Tremblay got involved, and he built a vacuum tube device that could display two movable dots. The first game was born:

"With that simple arrangement, we played a 'Chase Game' in which we pretended that one spot represented a fox and the other spot represented a 'hunter' or a 'hound'. The object of the game was to have the 'hound' chase the 'fox' until he 'caught' him by touching the 'fox' spot with the 'hound' spot. It was primitive, all right, but it was a video game, it was fun, and we were encouraged to forge ahead."

Until now, development was not related to their job activities, it was unofficial. However, that changed now they had something to show, and they received funding of "$2000 plus $500 for materials" for their project with approval from Herbert Campman, the corporate director of research and development.

Another innovation quickly followed, a toy gun, and Bill Harrison who joined the team in January 1967, designed some circuitry to be able to shoot the dots on the screen.

"Now we could `shoot' at that spit, and when we `hit' it, the spot disappeared from the screen. Having the other player move the spot rapidly and randomly around the screen gave us a moving target. Gun games were born!"

Gun games are still popular at video game centres, and later consoles also featured hunt games like Duck Hunt.

Later on, a programmable system for games was developed, called the "Brown Box" by Baer, because of the physical appearance of the wooden box. Now, a deal with a major TV maker was needed:

After showing it to all the major TV makers, a negotiation started with RCA. However, the RCA deal fell apart. But Bill Enders left RCA and joined Magnavox. At Magnavox, Enders championed Baer's game product, and ultimately the deal was struck.

On page 18, this deal is further explained: Bill Enders was one of the members of the RCA team, but left and joined Magnavox in the role of vice president of marketing. "And he had been very impressed with the demo."

The first home video system was renamed from the "Brown Box" to the "Magnavox Odyssey" and launched in 1972.

Although it was a marginal commercial success, partially hampered by Magnavox's marketing strategies, it may have been the inspiration for Nolan Bushnell's introduction of Pong.

Ralph Baer didn't stop with the Odyssey. He helped develop Coleco's Telestar gaming system and invented Simon, Maniac, and a lot of other games and devices. He holds many patents and is still consulting.