Ralph Baer died Saturday, aged 92

He was truly an inventor, and he changed the way we play games for ever.

RIP Ralph. ;(

R.I.P. best man.

Pong on, Mr. Baer. Pong on hard.

Just in case there is anyone out there who do not know who Ralph Baer was (shame on you), this is a good short video about him:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7vBZmzLXBK8&feature=youtu.be

pong forever

and for those who are too lazy to click the link ill boil it down to this : without ralph baer no video games

Well, that's a bit of an exaggeration.

details

i coudl have said with out him no video games as we know them
he build the first console
he showed it was possible with out a mainframe
atari took the idea and ran with it
and it all snowballed from there

with out the odyssey 1 and 2 gaming would look very different

http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2014/12/in-the-beginning-ralph-h-baer-and-the-birth-of-the-game-console/

Just read about this fella on wikipedia, what a man

condolences to his family and friends

R.I.P

rip

I must admit that i am not sure if i have heard about him before though. Then again, there are plenty of great technical people like that, "working in shadows"

--

..talking about "game" related deaths, Go Seigen died just week ago.

I suppose 99% people here have no idea who he was, but Seigen was pretty much the best [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Go_(game)]Go[/url] player in history. True genius^2 and no exaggaration.

Every gamer owes a lot to this guy.

Another jew who had to flee Germany due to racial politics.

It's interesting to note the huge ammount of gifted people (scientists and artists) who had to flee Germany and Austria due to Hitler's lunacy. If that asshole had died in the trenches of WWI, Germany would today be one of the world's leading superpowers.

As it is Hitler caused the downfall of Germany in almost every conceivable way.

For the truly geeky/nerdy among you, I really recommend checking out his book, Videogames: In The Beginning, which pretty much lays out the story of how he laid out and designed the first video game console, in the kind of minute detail that only an EE/CS major would love.

There was a hint of bitterness in the book in that reading between the lines, you see Baer acting pretty annoyed that Nolan Bushnell and Atari took a lot of the credit for developing and kickstarting the home video game market, even though the Magnavox Odyssey did pretty well for itself back in the day. Nevertheless, it's really heartwarming and comforting that Baer finally got the recognition he deserved towards the end of his life.

R.I.P. Thank you for giving us all such an instrumental part of our culture.

^This. Good journey, Mr. Baer.

RIP a great man