The First Gaming Console - Magnavox Odyssey

Some Background:

The Military’s Top Secret Brown Box Project: 
In 1966 Ralph Baer, Chief Engineer for Equipment Design at the defense contractor Sanders Associates, began work creating a technology where a simple game could be played on a television monitor. One year later this became a reality when Baer and his team created a simple game consisting of two dots chasing each other around the screen.

The government continued funding the now top secret Brown Box project as a military training tool. Baer’s team continued their innovations improving the tech and also creating the very first video game peripheral - a light gun that would work with the TV system.

Brown Box to The Odyssey:

The plan to use the Brown Box for military training didn’t quite work out. Six years later the top secret status was dropped and Sanders Associates licensed the tech to electronics company Magnavox. The Brown Box was renamed, slightly redesigned and released as the very first gaming console system for the home market - the Magnavox Odyssey – and An Industry was Born.

In 2006 President George W. Bush presented Ralph Baer with the National Medal of Technology award for inventing the home video game console. It was on the February 13, 2006, Baer was given a National Medal of Technology, in honor of his "groundbreaking and pioneering creation, development and commercialization of interactive video games"

Perhaps the reason, for Ralph Baer to be called the Father of Video Games.

As it reads in the manual, “With Odyssey you participate in television, you’re not just a spectator!”