Historical Spotlight: Jerry Lawson
Online gaming is a hobby enjoyed by millions around the world. Some fanatics enjoy consoles like PlayStation and Xbox while others prefer handheld systems like the Nintendo Switch or even something more powerful like a gaming PC. No matter what games and devices you’ve played, you have one man to thank for inventing the very first gaming console in 1976. Join me as we shine a historical spotlight on Jerry Lawson.
Gerald Anderson Lawson was born on December 1, 1940 in Brooklyn, New York to his parents Blanton and Mannings Lawson. They made sure he received a good education and always encouraged his interests and hobbies in science. Even from a young age, he aspired to be someone influential like George Washington Carver.
As a teenager, his family moved to Queens where he took up repairing television sets for money. At the ripe age of 13, he got an amateur radio license and built his very own station at home with parts he bought from local electronic stores. As for college, he attended Queens College and City College of New York, but never received a degree.
His initial experience with computers came while working at Federal Electric ITT and PDR Electronics in New York. After honing his programming and electronics skills, he moved west to California’s Silicon Valley. In 1970, he joined a company called Fairchild Semiconductor in San Francisco as an Applications Engineering Consultant within their sales division. While there, he created a coin-operated video game called Destruction Derby in his garage. The game was completed in early 1975 as one of the earliest microprocessor-driven games, but was never released.
As the years went on, Jerry was promoted to Chief Hardware Engineer and Director of Engineering and Marketing for Fairchild’s video game division. He led the development of the Fairchild Channel F console which was specifically designed to use swappable game cartridges based on technology licensed from Alpex Computer Corporation.
It was released in 1976 during a time when most gaming systems had programming built directly into the hardware and couldn’t be removed or changed. Short for Channel Fun, it was the first to be based on a microprocessor and debuted at a retail price of $169.95, equivalent to $870 in 2022. It sold about 350,000 units before being discontinued in 1983.
Lawson and his team worked hard to challenge the norm by creating the technology that allowed games to be stored on removable ROM cartridges. These cartridges were able to be inserted and removed repeatedly without any danger of electric shocks and also revolutionized the gaming industry by creating a new stream of revenue for console manufacturers. Instead of only having one game per console, players were able to buy a library of games.
The innovations for the Channel F console didn’t stop there. It also featured a variety of controls and a new 8-way joystick designed specifically by Lawson. It created history by being the very first home video game console that allowed gamers to not only play against the computer, but also pause without losing any progress. While the console itself wasn’t successful commercially, the cartridge approach paved the way for the Atari 2600 that was released in 1977.
As one of the few Black engineers in his industry, Lawson later said that colleagues were often surprised to find out his race. He once said: "With some people, it's become an issue. I've had people look at me with total shock. Particularly if they hear my voice, because they think that all Black people have a voice that sounds a certain way, and they know it. And I sit there and go, 'Oh yeah? Well, sorry, I don't.'"
In 1979, Jerry left Fairchild because of limited opportunities for advancement and founded Video Soft, the very first Black-owned video game development company to capitalize on the growing game market. The company was responsible for making software for the Atari 2600 in the early 1980s. The video game market crash and recession of 1983 - 1985 forced Lawson to close the company before it could ship any of its games.
Afterwards, he worked as a consultant, was an expert witness in court litigations, and acted as an advisor to young engineers. Among many, he worked with Stevie Wonder to produce a Wonder Clock that would wake a child with the sound of a parent’s voice. Unfortunately it never made it to production.
In 2003, he started having complications from diabetes, resulting in the loss of sight from one eye and mobility from one leg. His battle with diabetes continued until it ultimately claimed his life on April 9th, 2011. A month before his death, he was honored as an industry pioneer for his work on the game cartridge concept by the International Game Developers Association (IGDA). He was survived by his wife, Catherine, two kids, and his brother.
The next time you fire up 2K24, The Legend of Zelda, Grand Theft Auto, or any other video game, you can thank Jerry Lawson for not only creating the very first at home console, but for innovating the market to give players the convenience of using multiple games with the same console.
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Signed,
Jessica Marie
