Description:

Ralph Baer
[Nashua, NH], April 20, 1993
Pong! Ralph Baer Signed Document & First Video Game Schematic
DS
Superb content document signed, 12pp., [n.p. but likely Nashua, New Hampshire], April 20, 1983, a photostat draft for a chapter in "Screen Play: The Story of Video Games" (1983) by George Sullivan and on the rise of video games, with 14 pencil corrections in Baer's hand, as well as a page of hand-typed additions. 8.5" x 11". This book reviews the history of the technology behind video games, as well as the engineers and developers who brought the technology into wide, popular use. The third chapter, titled "Chapter 3: Video Game Pioneer," is devoted to Baer and offers a comprehensive biographical read with quotations and quips from the pioneer himself.

With: a covering letter on Baer's personal Sanders Associates notepaper, one page, 4" x 6", in full: "George [Sullivan] -- I like it—marked it up some & added a couple of paragraphs a/r Regards! Ralph."

Together with: a photostat of an early rendering for how a television set might be used for other applications, such as games, and is signed by Baer at conclusion. The schematic is humorously titled at the lower right corner "TV Mode, Darn Wiry Device 6 Sept 66." From this early sketch, Baer and two other engineers at Sanders Associates worked out the "Brown Box" console video game systems. Called "TVG#1" or "TV Game Unit #1," the device, when used with an alignment generator, produced a dot on the television screen that could be manually controlled by the user. This "dot" was the first tangible step in what would become the very first video game from the now-classic game Pong! Baer and his business partner, Ted Dabney, formed Atari, Inc., in June 1972, and released Pong, an arcade ping-pong game, that same year. Baer would eventually receive a patent in 1973, jointly owned by Baer and BAE Systems (formerly Sanders Associates). In very good condition overall. Please view images for content of this superb piece!

It reads, in extremely small part:

"…Popular Electronics magazine called him the 'Thomas Edison of the home TV game.' To Videography and several other publications, he is the 'father of the video game' …Baer has been granted more than 60 worldwide patents, most of them relating to video games. Many of today's video games are produced under license to his patents. One of Baer's first patents is probably the most important of them all. It was filed on August 10, 1970. It bears patent number 3,829,095. It concerns '… an apparatus and method … for the generation, display, and manipulation of symbols upon the screens of television receivers for the purpose of training simulation, playing games and for engaging in other activities by one or more participants.'

At the time that Baer first hit upon the idea of using the screens of home television sets for game playing, Nolan Bushnell, the founder of Atari and the individual often identified with the beginnings of the video-game industry, was a sophomore at the University of Utah. Nobody had even dreamed of Intellivision…

Ralph served in England with a Military Intelligence unit during the war and returned home to enter the American Television Institute of Technology in Chicago, becoming, as he once put it, 'one of the first people ever to earn a bachelor's degree in TV engineering'… Baer had long puzzled over the thought of what one might be able to do with home television besides turning it on, watching a program, and turning it off. He recognized that the TV set was a complex piece of electronics equipment. And there it was sitting in about 60 million homes.

One day in 1966, while waiting for a friend at the East Side Airline Terminal in New York, the idea came to him. You could use all those TV sets for playing games.

When he got back to his office in New Hampshire, Baer wrote out a detailed description of his idea. The memorandum, dated September 1, 1966, was eight pages in length.

The purpose of the invention," Baer wrote, "is to provide a large variety of low-cost data entry devices which can be used by an operator to communicate with a monochrome or color TV set of standard commercial, unmodified type. Entry to the TV set is to be gained either through direct connection to the video system or by connection to the antenna terminals." If you have a video game system in your home today, Baer's memo, written in 1966, pretty much describes it…

All that happened in the video-game field during the 1970s and into the 1980s was a boon to Ralph Baer….Over 30 patents for his video game inventions have been issued over the past several years. Most of these look toward the future of games and home computers, especially their marriage with Video Discs. As a result, next year's young space pilot might use a Video Disc to recreate Star War-like scenery through which he will guide his STAR FIGHTER against attacking enemy spacecraft; or he might be found driving 50 laps on the Indianapolis Speedway recorded on a Video Disc (hopefully without cracking up his car!!).

Using Video Discs for exciting realism is great but it creates a lot of technical problems, such as synchronizing the Discs and the game; and passing large quantities of computer data back and forth. Solving these problems and others, like sending game programs over telephone lines or playing games with a friend across town, are keeping Baer and associates busy…"

German-American engineer, inventor and game-developer Ralph H. Baer (1922–2014) developed a blueprint for the first home video game console, which was licensed to Magnavox. Baer is now considered the "Father of Video Games" due to his many contributions to the industry. In 2006 he was awarded the National Medal of Technology by President George H. Bush. That same year Baer donated many of his inventions to the Smithsonian National Museum of American History, and following his death in 2014, his basement workshop from his home in Manchester, NH was removed to the museum, where it is now on permanent display.

This item comes with a Certificate from John Reznikoff, a premier authenticator for both major 3rd party authentication services, PSA and JSA (James Spence Authentications), as well as numerous auction houses.

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  • Dimensions: 8.5" x 11"
  • Medium: DS

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