Early history of video games
That same year saw the release of the Magnavox Odyssey, the first home video game console which could be connected to a television set. The inventor, Ralph H. Baer, had initially had the idea in 1951 to make an interactive game on a television set. Unable to do so with the technological constraints at the time, he began work on a device that would attach to a television set and display games in 1966, and the "Brown Box", the last prototype of seven, was licensed to Magnavox to adapt and produce. They announced the console in May 1972, and it went on sale that September. The console and its games featured numerous innovations beyond being the first video game device for home consumers: it was the first game to use a raster-scan video display, or television set, directly displayed via modification of a video signal; it was also the first video gaming device to be displayed in a television commercial. It sold for US$100 and shipped with several games, including "Table tennis", which Bushnell had seen a demo of and which "Pong" had been based on. The Odyssey sold over 100,000 units in 1972, and more than 350,000 by the end of 1975, buoyed by the popularity of the table tennis game, in turn driven by the success of "Pong". "Pong" and the Odyssey kicked off a new era of video gaming, with numerous other competitors starting up in the video game industry as it grew in popularity.
Technological and industrial history of 20th-century Canada
Video games have become a wildly popular form of entertainment especially for youth, since the 1980s. The earliest video game dated from 1947 and a number of devices were produced in the 1950s and 1960s. However, it was the development of the computer chip that led to their popularization. The coin-operated arcade game "Pong" introduced by Atari in 1972 was the first to become widely available. The next phase of development included the introduction in the mid-1970s of the home console, first with a hardwired game, but then complemented in 1977 by “plug and play”, which allowed the use of game cartridges for variety. Beginning in 1985 PC gaming became popular, exploiting the flexibility and increasing popularity of the personal computer. In 1989 Nintendo released its Game Boy, the first of the hand-held electronic games. Game imagery became more elaborate with the introduction of the 32-bit chip that was featured in the Sony PlayStation released in 1994. The 128-bit, sixth generation of video games was born with the introduction of the Sega Dreamcast in 1998. These technologies found a place in the Canadian consumer market from the moment of their introduction and Canadian companies have played a role in their development, with hardware makers like ATI Technologies developing high-powered video chips for game imagery and software companies developing a number of games.