Lawson, Jerry (1940-2011), was an African American engineer and video game pioneer. He invented the video game cartridge. Early video game systems could only run the games that programmers had built into them. Lawson developed a system that allowed users to choose from different games that were stored separately on removable cartridges. Lawson was one of the first Black engineers in the video game industry.
Gerald “Jerry” Anderson Lawson was born on Dec. 1, 1940, in Brooklyn, a borough of New York City. He grew up in the borough of Queens, where his parents encouraged his early interest in chemistry and electronics. At a young age, Lawson built a ham radio and set up an amateur radio station in his room.
Lawson attended Queens College in the 1960’s. While in school, he worked in television repair and as a radio station engineer. He did not graduate, but local electronics companies recognized his expertise and quickly hired him. He worked for Federal Electric and other companies near New York City before moving to Palo Alto, California, to work for Kaiser Electronics. There, he developed video display devices for the military.
In 1970, Lawson began working for Fairchild Semiconductor, a San Jose, California, company that helped introduce the technology and culture that would form Silicon Valley. The area around San Jose is known by that name today because of the many computer and computer-related manufacturing and service industries that developed in the area. Lawson also joined a hobbyist group called the Homebrew Computer Club. Many members of the club, such as Apple cofounders Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak, would go on to become leaders in the personal computer industry.
Lawson built his own coin-operated video game, called Demolition Derby, in his garage during the early 1970’s. It was one of the first arcade video games. Fairchild Semiconductor discovered Lawson’s game and promoted him to director of engineering and marketing for their new video game division.
In 1976, Lawson led a team of Fairchild engineers to build the first cartridge-based video game system, called the Channel F Video Entertainment System. The Channel F featured two handheld joystick controllers and a slot for inserting cartridges. Each cartridge stored up to four games, such as puzzles, sports games, and action games. Lawson’s system paved the way for the Atari 2600 and other popular cartridge-based video game consoles .
Lawson left Fairchild in 1980 to start his own video game development company, called Videosoft. He went on to work in the video game industry as a consultant. He also served as a mentor for underprivileged youth. The International Game Developers Association honored Lawson for his contributions to the video game industry in 2011. Lawson died on April 9, 2011.
