Today is National Video Game Day!



Library ISBN 978-0-7660-3450-1
Grades 3-4

 One day, a television engineer named Ralph Baer began to wonder whether our TVs would be able to play games with us. His experiments led to the development of the first video game console, marketed by Magnavox as Odyssey. Honored by President George W. Bush as the father of video games, Baer is still at work developing new ideas.

Part of the "Genius at Work! Great Inventor Biographies", other titles in this elementary series include biographies on W. K. Kellogg, Les Paul, George Ferris, Igor Sikorsky, Vivien Thomas, James Naismith, Stephanie Kwolek, and more!

Video Games

I bet video games are on your Christmas shopping list. I know they're on mine. Still popular with kids and adults, the first video game was invented by Ralph Baer in 1968 and looked more like a console covered with brown wood-grain paper. It was stuffed with three hundred parts and could run several simple games. It wasn't until 1970 when Magnavox, a leading TV set manufacturer, offered to pay Baer royalties to develop and market his game ideas that his work finally paid off. Baer's first check in the amount of $100,000 was presented to him in the hospital where he was waiting for an operation.

Enslow's title The Guy Who Invented Home Video Games: Ralph Baer and His Awesome Invention is part of our Genius at Work Great Inventor Biographies series. If your school or library hosts a gaming program, you may want to introduce this title to your participants so they can have a better understanding as to how millions of video games today are the result of Ralph Baers lone question, "What Else Can a TV Do?"