Medición directa de la abertura de punta de alas (APA)

David Winter

In 1966, Ralph Baer, an electronics engineer working at Sanders Associates, thought again about an idea he had in 1951 when he was asked to build a television set: the possibility of using a television set to do something else than watch broadcasts. After writing his TV game ideas on paper, he started building a prototype to see whether something could be drawn electronically on a TV screen. Soon after, a chase game was designed. After many improvements, several other prototypes were built between 1966 and 1968, the most complete being the Brown Box, a double-chassis box covered with wood grain adhesive paper. The best game designed in 1968 was Tennis, a ball-and-paddle game which Atari later improved and sold under the name of PONG. After calling the most important television manufacturers in late 1968, Sanders Associates signed a first agreement with RCA in 1970, but it was cancelled. Later in 1971, an agreement was signed with Magnavox and Odyssey, and the first home video game console was released in September 1972 after two very successful market surveys in late 1971.

Technically, the Odyssey was a very primitive system. It had no electronic chip, no software, and no microprocessor, and it did not produce sound or color graphics. It could only display two players represented by two squares, one ball, and one center line which could be moved to the left of the screen or reduced to a third of its size. The cartridges provided with the console connected the circuits together so as to display what was necessary for each game, and manage collisions according to the game’s rules; for example, the ball bounced when it touched a player’s square. In another game, a player’s square could disappear when the ball touched it. So the cartridges only contained wires to interconnect the Odyssey circuits.

Only two players could use the system using the big controllers provided, which contained three knobs and one button. One knob moved the player horizontally, one moved it vertically, and the last one gave the ball ‘‘English,’’ changing its angle, because the system did not manage proper bounces according to the angle between the ball and a paddle when a collision occurred.

Because of its limited graphics, the Odyssey required the use of plastic overlays which were put on the television screen. They simulated the graphics that later systems could display themselves. Some games were educational: one could learn the states in America or learn basic calculations. Some were casino games like Roulette, or primitive car racing games, or play Tennis. Similar sports games were also available: Volleyball, Basketball, Handball, and Baseball, all based on the ball-and-paddle graphics. Most games required special accessories provided with the Odyssey: plastic chips, dice, carton boards, game cards, paper money, and so on.

Magnavox also released additional games which could be ordered individually or in packs of six. Each game contained its accessories: overlays, chips, and so forth, or even a cartridge (some used one of the six cartridges originally provided with the console). An additional shooting gallery pack also was made available to play two target-shooting games. It consisted of an electronic rifle and all game accessories.

But a major advancement would kill this fragile gaming world made of discrete compo- nents within the next year: the appearance of video game chips which became available to every manufacturer. Commonly called ‘‘PONG-in-a-chip,’’ these devices contained the equivalent of the discrete components of an entire system, and had more advanced features such as digital on-screen scoring, more game variants, and difficulty levels. Atari used its own PONG chips, but did not sell them to other manufacturers, as they would have dominated most of the worldwide market in a few years. Texas Instruments released several chips that could be used together to form different games, but these were not successful. The main force of the new PONG market was General Instruments (GI). GI started the development of a revolutionary single-chip video game device in mid-1975: the AY-3-8500. A complete video game system could be built with this chip and a few additional components. Since the chip was available to every manufacturer at low cost, it was no longer necessary to design a whole and expensive electronic circuit (GI provided the schematics for using the chip). This drastically changed the video game industry. Between 1976 and 1977, hundreds of manufacturers released their video game systems all over the world, and other chips appeared, some with color graphics, some with more games, and so on. The period of early video game history was over and the market was open to everybody. PONG stayed popular for a few years until more advanced cartridge consoles like the Atari 2600, Odyssey2, and Intellivision appeared in the market at affordable prices.1

Video Games in Europe: The Early Years 51

Finally, Magnavox sold a special carrying case which allowed transport of the whole system easily.

The Odyssey was very successful and over 350,000 units were produced between mid-1972 and mid-1975. It was even exported to several countries in Europe, and a couple of pirated versions appeared in Argentina and Spain. The Odyssey remained successful until 1975 when better home systems and more advanced games appeared. By the late 1970s, technology had improved so much that the Odyssey and all similar ball-and-paddle games were replaced by software-programmed systems like the Atari 2600.

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