Ralph H. Baer, Date of Birth, Place of Birth, Date of Death

Ralph H. Baer

German-American inventor and engineer

Date of Birth: 08-Mar-1922

Place of Birth: Rodalben, Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany

Date of Death: 06-Dec-2014

Profession: engineer, entrepreneur, inventor, patent inventor, video game developer

Nationality: United States, Germany

Zodiac Sign: Pisces

Ralph Henry Baer (born Rudolf Heinrich Baer; March 8, 1922 – December 6, 2014) was a German-American inventor, game developer, and engineer.
Baer's family fled Germany just before World War II and Baer served the American war effort, gaining an interest in electronics shortly thereafter.
Through several jobs in the electronics industry, he was working as an engineer at now BAE Systems, when he became conceived of the idea of playing games on a television screen around 1966.
With support of his employers, he worked through several prototypes until he arrived at a "Brown Box" that would later become the blueprint for the first home video game console, licensed by Magnavox as the Magnavox Odyssey.
Baer continued to design several other consoles and computer game units, including contributing to design of the Simon electronic game, helping to spark "Simon Says" as a popular phrase.
Baer continued to work in electronics until his death in 2014, with over 150 patents to his name. Baer is considered "the Father of Video Games" due to his many contributions to games and helping to spark the video game industry in the latter half of the 20th century.
In February, 2006, he was awarded the National Medal of Technology for "his groundbreaking and pioneering creation, development and commercialization of interactive video games, which spawned related uses, applications, and mega-industries in both the entertainment and education realms".