“Here we are playing ping pong when we ought to be working,” says Ralph Baer, the inventor who subsequently created the Magnavox Odyssey home gaming system. The pre-Pong match takes place in Nashua, New Hampshire.

As this 1973 television commercial clearly illustrates, the first home video game console, the Magnavox Odyssey, was incredibly lame. There were no graphics for backgrounds, so you had to attach some sort of plastic sheet to your TV screen, and then you got to move around some sickly looking dots with a controller. But designer Ralph Baer‘s pioneering efforts were still incredible. His prototype (“brown box”) is today housed at the Smithsonian.

Ralph Baer autograph on lower left side of console. (Image by Wgungfu at en.wikipedia.)