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1960-1969 The 1960s

An engineer proposes making ordinary television sets interactive

Ralph Baer, a division engineer at a New Hampshire defense contractor, wrote a short proposal for games played on ordinary television receivers. His management funded the work quietly, and the first home console followed.

Key facts and significance Hide details
Platform
Home consoles
Region
North America
Period
The 1960s

Why it matters

The home console begins as a memo. Its premise, that the screen most people already owned was the platform, separated Baer's approach from every laboratory game before it and from arcade machines, which brought their own hardware. That premise governed console design for the next forty years.

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