Television Game Documents
name: label: Collection Donor
content: Baer, Ralph H., 1922-2014
setName: label: See more items in
content: Ralph H. Baer Papers
unitdate: label: Date
content: 1966 - 1972
dataSource: label: Archival Repository
content: Archives Center, National Museum of American History
identifier: label: Identifier
content: NMAH.AC.0854, Series 4
objectType: label: Type
content: Archival materials
scopecontent: label: Scope and Contents
content: This series consists of records created during Baer's work on interactive television games at Sanders Associates. The records include notes, drawings, engineering schematics, laboratory notebooks, and administrative records created by Ralph Baer, William H. Harrison, and William T. Rusch. Baer retrieved these documents, with the assistance of David Winter, from a Chicago law firm years after they had been assembled for the various legal cases involving his television game inventions. Many of the documents are marked and stamped as trial exhibits. Rusch's notebooks include work on an electric guitar pick-up and other non-television game inventions. They also contain ideas about a wide range of games that might be developed. Because these papers were badly disorganized, the archival staff arranged them in the current order.

The records in Series 4, Subseries 4, consist of copies of records in Subseries 1-3, apparently created before the originals were turned over to legal counsel. These documents are arranged as received from Ralph Baer. They may contain copies of some documents for which originals do not exist.