The Boy Who Thought Outside the Box

The Story of Video Game Inventor Ralph Baer

 Sterling Publishing

(pub. 5.12.2020) 
48 pages

A True Tale with

A Cherry On Top  

A uthor:  Marcie Wessels 

    and illustrator:  Beatriz Castro

C haracter: Ralph Baer

O verview:        

 

"Today, the video game industry keeps growing, with ever more platforms available to fans. But how did the very first system come about? This picture-book biography of Ralph Baer, whose family fled Nazi Germany for the US, introduces kids to a great inventor AND the birth of the first home console. Using wartime technology, Baer thought outside the box and transformed the television into a vehicle for gaming...”

T antalizing taste:

     "On the streets of Cologne, Germany, a boy named Ralph Baer made his own fun. He rolled hoops on the sidewalk. He raced his scooter. He played stick hockey and biked with his best friend, Herbert.

     Ralph played freely until being outside became too dangerous for a Jewish kid like him.

     With no one to play with, Ralph spent more time indoors, tinkering with his construction set. He connected girders and gears, rods and brackets, pulleys and plates. The models in the manual were a cinch! Ideas for new inventions whirled and swirled in Ralph's brain. To build them, he needed more  parts.

     But money was scarce. Ralph would have to make do with what he had. How else might he use the pieces and parts around him? He loved to figure and reconfigure - to invent!"

And something more: The Author's Note explains that "Ralph was awarded the National Medal of Technology in 2006, and in 2010 he was inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame. His workshop and a prototype of the Brown Box [video game test units created between 1967 and 1969] can be found in the Smithsonian Museum in Washington, D.C."