Cologne - Two people, a TV, two bars, which flies between a tennis ball. Ping-pong. Ping-pong.
What few know: A 87 years old Rhinelander invented the classics. On Tuesday, Ralph Baer, father of video games, returned to Cologne.
A thin elderly man, physically and mentally fit, Honorary Chairman of the Jury for "Lara," the German Games Award, in the 21 medienforum.nrw is awarded.
"Computer games today - since I myself no longer look through," says the study / television. Empire? "I'm fine." But he himself has never earned directly to his idea.
Forefather of "Pong" for the Playstation. Thus, the development ran clicking here>
He brings - as a two-year moved to Cologne, with 16 refugees from the Nazis in the U.S., then two years as a GI stationed in Europe - with its mid-century invasion of the sixties an industry on the track, which now rakes in billions.
Ralph Baer builds a device to intercept Soviet radio conversations in Berlin, radars capable of detecting submarines.
"But I have also put together TV and wanted to necessarily develop a fun added. At a bus stop in New York City came to me then the idea for the remote table tennis game. "
The gifted tinkerers began - at first behind the back of his employer - zusammenzuschrauben box full of electronics, with which one can move through squares of knobs on a screen, to light guns to shoot them.
The result is 1969, the "Brown Box" for the boob tube-tennis. Baer's employer from the defense industry to patent the idea to sell the license to the TV device "Magnavox."
"This" Odyssey "has sold 350,000 copies." Kurz drauf Atari developed the arcade machines "Pong". 25 million copies sold.
