In History: The first ever video game console, 50 years on

Half a century ago, the BBC's Tomorrow's World program unveiled the Magnavox Odyssey, the world's inaugural home video game console. This rudimentary yet revolutionary design sparked the multi-billion-pound gaming industry we know today. The show's host, Raymond Baxter, introduced this groundbreaking device to the British public, describing it as a novel concept from the US that could transform a television into a two-player game.

The Magnavox Odyssey was the brainchild of Ralph Baer, a German-American engineer. Baer had been experimenting with the concept of interactive television games since the 1960s. He and his team developed numerous prototype consoles before launching the Odyssey to an unsuspecting American audience in 1972, a year prior to the BBC broadcast.

The Odyssey was a rectangular console that could be connected to a television. It came with two rectangular controllers equipped with dials that players could manipulate to control the gameplay. By contemporary gaming standards, the Odyssey was quite basic. It lacked sound capabilities, was battery-powered, and did not have a scoring system, requiring players to keep track of their own scores. The graphics were also primitive, with the console only capable of generating white squares and lines on a black background. To compensate for this, the company created plastic overlays that could be affixed to the television screen to produce the game's visuals. They also developed a light gun for a game named Shooting Gallery. Despite its simplicity, the Odyssey was transformative, bringing video gaming directly into people's homes. Its straightforward design and minimal graphics made it accessible to almost anyone, captivating players with the novelty of controlling a game on their own televisions.