Television Gaming Apparatus

Filed May 27th, 1969

1969 is downright prehistoric as far as video games go–it was three years before the debut of Pong–so this patent by defense firm Sanders Associates is as seminal as you can get. (It resulted in a product when Magnavox released the Odyssey, the first game console, in 1972.) I don’t know if  Sanders actually proposed a game controller with five paddles on it, but I sort of like the idea.