Video game pioneer Ralph H. Baer dies at 92

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last updated 10 January 2015

Ralph H. Baer, the inventor of the first home video game system, died Saturday in Manchester, New Hampshire. He was 92.

Before Nintendo, PlayStation, and even Atari, there was the Odyssey. Baer, working as an engineer with a military contractor, started outlining a "game box" in 1966 while waiting for a friend, The New York Times reports. His boss gave him $2,000 to research the idea and $500 for materials, as well as two people to help. They went through prototype after prototype in their secret workshop, and in 1972, licensed their system to Magnavox, which sold it as the Odyssey.

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Catherine Garcia has worked as a senior writer at The Week since 2014. Her writing and reporting have appeared in Entertainment Weekly, The New York Times, Wirecutter, NBC News and "The Book of Jezebel," among others. She's a graduate of the University of Redlands and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.

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