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Games Entertainment

Father of Pong Honored At White House 44

Posted by Zonk from the regret-that-I-have-but-one-pong-to-give-to-my-country dept.
Gamasutra reports that Ralph Baer, the man whose work inspired the game Pong, will be honored in a White House ceremony on February 14th. He is to receive the 2004 National Medal of Technology. From the article: "The award, which is America's highest honor for science and technology, goes to those who 'have helped commercialize new technologies, create jobs, improve American productivity, and stimulate the Nation's economic growth and development', and was established by Congress in 1980."
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Father of Pong Honored At White House More

Father of Pong Honored At White House

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  • Obl. bash.org quote (Score:5, Funny)

    by Psionicist ( 561330 ) on Saturday February 11, 2006 @03:50PM (#14695503)
    http://bash.org/?9322

    <tag> Ouroboros: lets play Pong
    <Ouroboros> Ok.
    <tag> |    .
    <Ouroboros> .    |
    <tag> |  .
    <Ouroboros>    . |
    <tag> | .
    <Ouroboros>      | .
    <Ouroboros> Whoops

  • 2004? (Score:4, Funny)

    by planetjay ( 630434 ) on Saturday February 11, 2006 @03:51PM (#14695519) Homepage
    Is that a typo or is the government really that slow now?

    • Re:2004? (Score:1, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward
      The selection process is running on an Atari 2600.

  • Comment removed (Score:3, Funny)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Saturday February 11, 2006 @03:56PM (#14695549)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • What? (Score:2, Informative)

    by fm6 ( 162816 )
    Pong is not exactly a great technological accomplishment. Actually something of an accident. If I remember the story correctly, Atari was working on implementation of spacewar [wikipedia.org] that could run on reasonably priced hardware. They built Pong just to test a particular circuit. Then they discovered how addictive it was....
    • Well, fire was probably invented 'by accident' and still I call it quite a technological accomplishment.
      • Excuse me, you think fire is a human invention?

        What humans did invent is a long series of devices for generating fire. All of which required a lot of insight, careful thought, and patient experimentation.

        Accident certainly plays a role in invention, but no real invention is pure accident.

        • All of which required a lot of insight, careful thought, and patient experimentation.

          C'mon. Originally, someone accidentially dropped a rock on another rock and it set the pine needles under it on fire.
        • fire was probably used/tamed by man long before they learned how to create it. i imagine early 'domestic' fires we created by just taking part of a wildfire to a different location and keeping it alive. the trick, of course, is finding stuff that'll easily burn during, or soon after, a thunder storm. unless you're lucky/unlucky enough to live near a volcano.

    • Re:What? (Score:3, Informative)

      by IntlHarvester ( 11985 )
      Ralph Baer invented Pong in his basement years before Atari even started.

    • Re:What? (Score:4, Informative)

      by iocat ( 572367 ) on Sunday February 12, 2006 @08:28PM (#14702174) Homepage Journal
      No, in fact, you don't remember the story correctly (maybe you should check before you post next time).

      Ralph Baer created, documented, and patented the process for a Pong-like game well before Atari created and released Pong. Nolan Bushnell's Atari lost a court case that established the primacy of Magnavox's initial invention, gave Atari full rights to Pong-line games, and actually required Atari (not Magnavox) to go after other rip-offs. Oh, and Atari had to kick Magnavox some dough, of course.

      According to Nolan, he had Al Alcorn create Pong as essentially a programming exercise, which may or may not be true, but it's immaterial to Ralph Baer's legitimate claim to have invented Pong (Nolan popularized videogames, and that's a fine legacy too). It is clear that Nolan had previously seen the Magnavox Pong, so he may have remembered the concept.

      In any case, it wasn't trivial to build Pong, whether your were Ralph Baer, Nolan Bushnell, or Al Alcorn. Pong doesn't even have a CPU, it's just a state machine, and it's not something that was obvious or easy to do with the available (non-military) hardware of the early 70s.

      So, frankly, STFU, before you start dissing on Ralph Baer, who is one of the most unsung, yet most important, contributers to the videogame age ever.

      • OK, I accept that your version of techno-history is correct and mine is wrong. But unless you've never posted anything on Slashdot that turned out to be wrong, you can GFY.
        • Fair enough! Posting incorrect info, then having someone correct it, nastily, is part of what Slashdot is all about. Next time, I'll make more grammatical mistakes, so you can sink your teeth into something in the reply... Anyway, I'm happy to GFM while you STFU.
      • In any case, it wasn't trivial to build Pong, whether your were Ralph Baer, Nolan Bushnell, or Al Alcorn. Pong doesn't even have a CPU, it's just a state machine, and it's not something that was obvious or easy to do with the available (non-military) hardware of the early 70s.

        If my Dad's stories are true, Baer had plenty of military hardware. The project started out as an experiment for some military application (HUD, maybe?). When the game was discovered, I think that is when it went to Magnavox. My Dad
  • Among all his battles in Texas and Alabama, his
    battles with the Pong were his most fearsome.
    He was missing in action in Alabama shortly after the
    Battle of the Pong began...and was discharged a year later
    after the charge of the pong brigade.

    "Paddle to the left, Paddle to the right, bright ball streaking across the black
    field of glory"

  • G4TV (Score:3, Informative)

    by Detritus ( 11846 ) on Saturday February 11, 2006 @05:25PM (#14695955) Homepage
    G4TV showed an excellent documentary on the life of Ralph Baer as part of their series Icons. He really does deserve the medal and the recognition.

    See http://www.g4tv.com/icons/episodes/4174/Ralph_Baer .html [g4tv.com].

  • i'm not completely sure this invention is deserving of a 'national medal of technology,' but i know one thing - the first time i played pong is a very fond memory i'll never forget. in the 70's, my dad worked part-time in a bowling alley. i was about 10, and sometimes helped him out in exchange for quarters to play pinball.

    one night the vending company delivered the game 'pong,' and my dad and i were the 1st ones to try it out. even though it seems like a simple game compared to today's standards, i
    • This man, not this invention. He also came up with Simon (mmm, colors and beeps in an ever increasing pattern). What politician *hasn't* been exposed to at least one of Pong or Simon? :)
  • http://www.osti.gov/accomplishments/videogame.html [osti.gov] Pretty interesting bit of history. In fact it's really interesting as to how close the United States actually came close to owning the patent on video games.
  • I create pongs on a daily basis. Ain't nobody honouring me... :(
  • Ralph Baer, father of the Magnavox Odyssey home videogame system, is not exactly the "father of Pong." It is true that the Odyssey, which predates Nolan Bushnell's Pong, featured a "Tennis" game whose gameplay is pretty close to indistinguishable from Pong's, and that there is an historical debate over whether or not Bushnell saw the game before he built Pong. But then again, neither Pong nor Baer's Tennis game are all that different from Willy Higginbotham's 1958 "Tennis for Two."

    It would be more accurate
    • there is an historical debate over whether or not Bushnell saw the game before he built Pong

      Debate? What debate? It has been established, beyond a shadow of a doubt, in a court of law, that Nolan attended a demonstration of the Odyssey game system, and it was at that demo that he saw the unit's tennis game.

      And as a minor secondary point, Bushnell did not build Pong, that was Al Alcorn. As others have already pointed out, Nolan described the game to Al and told him to build it as an engineering exercise.
  • What many folks don't know is that Baer was working on a military project when he invented Pong. My Dad was working at Sanders (now part of Lock..., er BAE) and got to see the prototype before it became the game. At the time, my Dad didn't know what he was looking at. Later though, he bought us an Odyssey.

    For me, it is ironic that I was born the same year. Now, I am a 39 year old video game junkie. Coincidence? I don't think so.
  • I'm glad that he got the recogition while he is still alive.

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