1st Generation – Magnavox Odyssey

Rudolph Heinrich Baer was born in March 1922 in a Jewish family living in Germany, and moved to New York in 1983. He graduated from the National Radio Institute as a radio service technician in 1940. He then graduated with a Bachelor of Science degree in Television Engineering in 1949. In 1956 Baer joined Sanders Associates in Nashua, New Hampshire, where he was promoted to head of instrument design, which enabled him to develop a game-playing device that plugged into a television set. He was joined by Bill Harrison (technician) and Bill Rusch (chief engineer) to work together to create such consoles, but Sanders Associates could not find partners to promote the device, which put it on hold.

In 1971, Baer signed a deal with the company Magnavox, where he created Magnavox Odyssey, the very first home video game system. Magnavox Odyssey was released in May 1972, and since it was heavily advertised, it sold 100,000 units in the same year. The Odyssey was an instant success when it was launched in 1972, but after selling over 330,000 units for around $100 each, it was discontinued in 1975 and replaced by rivals like Atari and Intellivision.

Figure 1 - Magnavox Odyssey console

This console contained no processor or memory, and it required six C cell batteries to work. It used cards that contained pin outs, in order to change the game settings. Plastic overlays could be placed over the television screen to create graphics and color, since the actual display consisted only of white squares on a black background. The Odyssey originally came with 6 game cards, multiple game and score cards, a master control unit, 2 player control units, a game cord, a game switch and 2 sized sets of 11 overlays for medium and large television screens. Some of the games that could be played on this console were Pong, Table Tennis, Football, Hockey, Submarine, and Roulette.

Bibliography:

Wikipedia.org, (2015). Ralph H. Baer. [online] Available at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ralph_H._Baer [Accessed 28 February 2015]

About.com/compute, (2015). Hardware Profile - Magnavox Odyssey - The First Gaming Console. [online] Available at: http://classicgames.about.com/od/classicvideogames101/p/MagnavoxOdyssey.htm [Accessed 28 February 2015]

Videogameconsolelibrary.com, (2014). Magnavox Odyssey. [online] Available at: http://www.videogameconsolelibrary.com/pg70-odyssey.htm#page=reviews [Accessed 28 February 2015]