Jewish Invention Myths: The Video Game
Moving on to another commonly cited jewish invention; we have the video game. Like many ‘Jewish Invention Myths’ a narrative has been built around a kernel of truth, so it superficially seems convincing until you dig deeper.
We begin with Aish’s claim that:
‘Who can believe that video games already have been around for 50 years? Ralph Baer, whose family fled Germany just before World War II, helped pave the way for the game systems we know today. The Jewish engineer began to investigate how to play games on a television in 1966. Then he and two colleagues created several test units. The result was the Brown Box, a prototype for the first multiplayer, multiprogram video game system. Baer licensed it to Magnavox, which released the design as the Odyssey in 1972.’ (1)
‘MNews’ summarises it more succinctly as follows:
‘Ralph Baer is called the "father of video games". Back in 1966, he created the “Brown Box”, the first-ever console video game system.’ (2)
This particular claim has some support from within the video game historian community with Alexander Smith of ‘They Create Worlds’ writing that:
‘From available evidence, no one else thought to adapt television technology into a game until Ralph Baer in 1951.’ (3)
The problem with Smith’s argument is that while Ralph Baer – who was indeed jewish – (4) is that while Baer did conceive of the video game in 1951 while working for electronics company Loral. He didn’t begin to actually pursue this properly until 1966 and had his prototype built by 1967. (5)
You see by backdating the video game as we know to it Baer’s ideas in 1951 rather than the prototype of 1967 Smith and Griffiths both work on the assumption that there is something utterly unique in Baer’s thought rather than look at what precisely Baer’s innovation really was.
What do I mean by that?
Well Smith and Griffiths both take the attitude that no one else had the idea of a game interacting with a television using an external controller and/or external console as well setting vague goalposts around ‘electronic complexity’. (6)
My problem with this is that I don’t think it is intellectually honest and that it is almost calculated to push Baer as the ‘father of the video game’ more than because it is intellectually sound.
For example, Thomas T. Goldsmith Jr. and Estle Ray Mann – both non-jewish Americans - in 1947 created a games console where the player had to calculate artillery trajectories using an oscilloscope display called the cathode-ray tube amusement device while working at DuMont Laboratories. (7)
DuMont never elected to go forward with the prototype games console (8) but that – as with Baer’s own prototype video game console of 1967 – does not mean that it isn’t the first video game as we’d understand it.
The first video game that was actually created – not just coded but never played as an early chess game was by Alan Turing – was created by Oliver Aberth as the first real-time graphics game at MIT on the Whirlwind I computer in February 1951 (9) and was followed by the OXO game (Tic Tac Toe) created by Alexander Douglas on the EDSAC computer at Cambridge Mathematical Laboratory in the UK in 1952.
Douglas’ OXO game is particularly notable precisely because it shows the hallmarks of the classic video game as defined by Smith and Griffiths with the use of two television-like screens (10) and the use of an external rotary controller (like an early video game controller]. (11)
Aberth’s and Douglas’ inventions were followed by:
‘A pool game programmed by William Brown and Ted Lewis specifically for a demonstration of the University of Michigan-developed MIDSAC computer at the university in 1954. The game, developed over six months by the pair, featured a pool stick controlled by a joystick and a knob, and a full rack of 15 balls on a table seen in an overhead view.’ (12)
Now given that Aberth created a video game with real-time graphics, Douglas’ created a game which used television-like screens and an external controller plus Brown and Lewis brought it all together in 1954 to create what sounds very much like an early video game. It begs the question as to what Baer really ‘created’ in 1967 which also explains why Smith and Griffiths are so keen to back date Baer’s ‘invention’ to 1951 rather than to when he actually produced a prototype 1967.
This is because the video game had already been invented by 1967 – by non-jewish Americans and Britons - as had in many ways the games console and all that Baer really did was take these ideas and connect them to the family television set so they could be played on that rather than an external console or an early computer.
Scratch another jewish invention myth!
References
(1) https://aish.com/10-big-jewish-inventions/
(2) https://mnews.world/en/news/the-great-jews-and-their-inventions
(3) https://videogamehistorian.wordpress.com/tag/estle-ray-mann/
(4) https://www.britannica.com/biography/Ralph-Baer
(5) Devin Griffiths, 2013, ‘Virtual Ascendance: Video Games and the Remaking of Reality’, 1st Edition, Rowman and Littlefield: Lanham, pp. 14-15
(6) Ibid.; https://videogamehistorian.wordpress.com/tag/estle-ray-mann/
(7) https://worldwide.espacenet.com/patent/search/family/024910470/publication/US2455992A?q=pn%3DUS2455992; https://videogamehistorian.wordpress.com/tag/estle-ray-mann/
(8) https://videogamehistorian.wordpress.com/tag/estle-ray-mann/
(9) https://videogamehistorian.wordpress.com/2021/03/08/worldly-wednesdays-the-first-real-time-games/
(10) Masaaki Kurosu, 2014, ‘Human-Computer Interaction Applications and Services: 16th International Conference, HCI International 2014, Proceedings, Part 3’, 1st Edition, Springer: New York, p. 561
(11) Tony Hey; Gyuri Papay, 2014. ‘The Computing Universe: A Journey through a Revolution’, 1st Edition, Cambridge University Press: New York, p. 174
(12) https://videogamehistorian.wordpress.com/2014/01/22/the-priesthood-at-play-computer-games-in-the-1950s/