History of video games/Platforms/Merlin

Development
The Merlin was developed by former NASA employee Dr. Bob Doyle and his astrophysicist wife Dr. Holly Doyle in the 1970's. In 1977 Bob Doyle was working on an electronic tic tac toe game, but was told by a marketing employee to make something that wasn't boring. The case was designed by Arthur Venditti, who had also named the Nerf Ball.

Speaking to Washington Post reporter Tom Zito in 1978, Robert Doyle lamented not having long term storage for the Merlin due to the limitations of technology at the time. Doyle also hoped to use voice activated technology in the future. Reporter Tom Zito himself would later work on the Control Vision console.

Launch
The Merlin was launched by Parker Brothers in 1978. The Merlin cost $25 dollars or $35 dollars. In 1979 the Merlin continued to sell well.

In 1982 the Master Merlin was launched. In 1996 the screen based system Merlin, the 10th quest was released. A smaller, more power efficient Merlin was released in 2004.

Technology
The Merlin is powered by a 4 bit Texas Instruments TMS1100 processor. When ordered in bulk, the TMS1000 was inexpensive, and cost around $2.

The Merlin has 48 bytes of RAM and two kilobytes of ROM.

External Resources

 * Centre for Computing History - Merlin the Electronic Wizard page.
 * Computer History Museum - Merlin page.
 * Handheld Museum - Merlin page.
 * Handheld Museum - Master Merlin page.
 * Handheld Museum - Merlin the 10th quest page.