Ralph Baer and the Beginnings of Video Game Technology

 
Since the beginning of time, humans have sought ways to entertain themselves. Interactive games have been around for a long time; however, the main problem with them is that another player was usually needed. As technology improved, we have found new ways to make interactive games a solo activity.

What is a Video Game
The video game history started in a strange and complicated way and it is important to avoid confusions with what happened in the 1950s and 1960s. The real video game history started with Ralph Baer as early as 1951. One very important thing to remember is how the video game has been defined in the 1960s before modern technologies allowed video games to be played on computers.

A video game is defined as an apparatus that displays games using RASTER VIDEO equipment: a television set, a monitor, etc. In the 1950s and 1960s, computers were not only exceedingly expensive, but used a technology that could not allow integrating them into a video game system. Only mainframes could allow playing a few games. These games qualified as COMPUTER games, not VIDEO games. To understand video games, one must understand a brief history.
Probably, the first interactive game that one could play by oneself is the slot machine. Slot machines were quite common, and quite popular, although the technology was barbaric, at best. Furthermore, the game could be quite boring to play, (especially if one had a short attention span or were losing all their money). To complicate matters further, slot machines were considered games of chance, and frowned upon by opponents of gambling and subject to legislation by federal, state, and local governments.