![]() ![]() Bush would present Ralph Baer with the National Medal of Technology award for inventing the home video game console. Magnavox would sell nearly 100,000 Odyssey video games by the end of 1972. (The game was such a blatant rip-off of the Odyssey system that Atari would later be sued by Magnavox for patent infringement.) Bushnell loved the game so much he hired engineer Alan Alcorn to design and build a coin operated version of the ping-pong game: he named the new video game “Pong,” and the coin-operated video game industry was launched. The Odyssey was designed by Ralph Baer, who had a working prototype finished by 1968.This prototype is affectionately known as the 'Brown Box' to classic video game hobbyists. He attended a demonstration of the Magnavox Odyssey and played the console’s ping-pong game, much to his delight and astonishment. The Magnavox Odyssey is the first home video game console, predating the Atari Pong home consoles by three years. ![]() Shortly thereafter, in May 1972 Nolan Bushnell – later president of Atari – visited the “The Magnavox Profit Caravan” at the Airport Marina Hotel in Burlingame, CA. In March of 1972, Magnavox presented the first Odyssey video game to large groups of Magnavox dealers in several US locations – marking the official launch of home video games nationwide. Some of the games, such as ping pong, could be played without a background, while others required the overlays to play.Īs it said in the manual, “With Odyssey you participate in television, you’re not just a spectator!” To enliven the look, the Odyssey came with transparent screen overlays in a variety of colors, which the player stuck to the TV screen as color backgrounds for the games. The Magnavox Odyssey (known as the Brown Box during development) is the first commercial home video game console. The games had no background graphics, just a blank screen. The graphics the Odyssey offered were simple white dots and lines, with a base game derived from ping pong, with the dots batted back and forth by controllers. The Brown Box was renamed the Odyssey, slightly redesigned and released as the very first gaming console system for the home market – and an industry was born. Six years later the top secret status was dropped and Sanders Associates licensed the technology to electronics company Magnavox. The plan to use the Brown Box for military training didn’t quite work out. The government continued funding the project as Baer’s team continued their innovations, improving the technology and adding to the Brown Box’s interactivity with the creation of the very first video peripheral – a light gun that could work with the TV system. The top secret project became known as the “Brown Box,” named for the wood that encased the console. ![]() One year later the work came to full fruition, when Baer and his team created a the world’s first video game, consisting of two dots chasing each other around the screen. He created a technology where a simple game could be played on a television monitor. In 1966 Ralph Baer, Chief Engineer for Equipment Design at the defense contractor Sanders Associates, began work on a new training tool for the military, one that could be interactive and a test of skills. The video game era began in 1972 with the release of the Magnavox Odyssey, an at-home game console with primitive games consisting of nothing more than dots and lines – but nonetheless the world’s first home video game. ![]()
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