First Consoles
Ralph Baer in 1951 is employed by electronics communication company Loral, where among other assignments he works on a new TV receiver design. It is during this project that his thoughts turn to the passive nature of television, but his idea of working an interactive game into the design meets with the expected lack of enthusiasm from Loral brass.
In December 1966, with the help of Bob Tremblay and Bob Solomon, he are ready to demonstrate a system that allows spots to be moved around on a TV screen. By using two circuits known as Spot Generators, they create a simple electronic game of "tag" with two spots chasing each other, if one is caught by the other it is wiped out.
Engineer Bill Rusch designs a new game, and it is perhaps not surprising that it too harkens back to an
archetypal playground activity, using three spot generators to produce two onscreen paddles along with a
ball in a game of "catch". Baer and Harrison further refine the play so that the ball can be served from
off-screen when it has been missed by a player, creating a simple ping-pong game
Magnavox Odyssey
Magnavox licenses the device and all rights to patents and know-how in 1971. After further developing the
system they release the first ever commercially available home videogame to Magnavox dealers as the Odyssey
in May of 1972. But while Baer had envisioned a cheap TV add-on retailing around US$19.95, the Odyssey sells
for US$100.
Channel F
The first fully programmable video game system is the 8-bit Fairchild Channel F, manufactured by Fairchild
Camera and Instrument in 1976, retailing for around US$170. It is originally known as the Video Entertainment
System (VES). Its designer is Jerry Lawson, and the Channel F utilizes the first microchip, the F8, invented
at Fairchild by Robert Noyce. "Programmable" means that the user can change games by inserting big yellow ROM
cartridges called Videocarts into the machine in order to change games. The first videocart available is
titled 4-in-1, and does indeed hold four games: Tic-Tac-Toe, Shooting Gallery, Doodle, and Quadra-Doodle.
Hockey and Tennis are also available as games built into the console.