Google Doodle celebrates Gerald Lawson’s 82nd Birthday, an American electronic engineer. He was one of the fathers in modern gaming and led the team that created the first interchangeable cartridge home video gaming system on December 1, 2022. Here are some fun and interesting facts about Jerry Lawson.
Who was Gerald “Jerry”) Lawson?
Personal Information
Birth date: December 1, 1940
Birthplace: Brooklyn, New York, U.S
(aged 70) died on, April 9, 2011.
Death place: Santa Clara, California, U.S.
Alma mater: Queens College
Also known as: Computer engineer
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Interesting facts about Jerry Lawson
Jerry Lawson is best-known for his design of the Fairchild Channel F console and leading the team which pioneered the first video game cartridge.
Black Enterprise magazine called him the “father” of the videogame cartridge in 1982. After leaving Fairchild, he established Video-Soft.
Gerald Anderson Lawson was conceived in Brooklyn, New York City, on December 1, 1940.
Mannings was his mother and worked for the city. She also joined the Parents-Teachers Association of the local school. Blanton, his father, was a longshoreman and was very interested in science. His grandfather was a physicist by training, but he chose to become a postmaster rather than pursue a career in physics.
Gerald Lawson was raised by his parents who made sure he received a high-quality education and encouraged him into chemistry and ham radio as hobbies. Lawson claimed that George Washington Carver was his first-grade teacher.
Gerald Lawson, a teenager, lived in Queens where he repaired television sets for a living. At 13 years old, he received his amateur radio license. He then built his station at home with parts he purchased from local electronics shops.
Gerald Lawson attended Queens College and City College of New York but was not awarded a degree.
Because so many innovative tech companies had started there, the city and its surrounding area were called “Silicon Valley”.
Gerald “Jerry” Lawson began his career at Fairchild Semiconductor San Francisco in 1970, as an application engineering sales consultant.
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Demolition Derby was an arcade game that was coin-operated and developed in his garage. Demolition Derby was one of the first microprocessor-driven games, and it was completed in the early part of 1975 using Fairchild’s brand-new F8 microprocessors.
In the middle of 1970s, Gerald Lawson was promoted from Chief Hardware Engineer to Director of Engineering and Marketing in Fairchild’s videogame division. Fairchild Channel F was developed by Lawson. It was released in 1976.
Lawson and his team improved Alpex technology to allow games to be stored on ROM cartridges that could then be removed.
Lawson’s new eight-way joystick and a “pause” button, both firsts for home video games consoles, were among the controls found on the Channel F console. Although Channel F’s commercial success was limited, the Atari 2600 in 1977 made cartridge-based gaming popular.
While Fairchild was still working, the Homebrew Computer Club had only two black members: Ron Jones and Gerald Lawson. This group of computer enthusiasts included many well-known people, including Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak who founded Apple. Lawson stated that Wozniak was not hired by him after he interviewed him for Fairchild.
Gerald “Jerry” Lawson, a.k.a. Gerald Lawson, left Fairchild in 1980 in order to create Videosoft. The company produced software and developed video games for the Atari 2600. This was at the time when Channel F had become the most popular system on market. Five years later, Videosoft closed down and Lawson took up counseling.
Stevie Wonder and Jerry Lawson collaborated to create a “Wonder Clock”, which would wake up a child by the sound of a parent’s voice. However, it never saw production. Lawson later collaborated with Stanford’s mentor program to create a book about his life.
In March 2011, the International Game Developers Association (IGDA), recognized Lawson as a pioneer of the game cartridge concept.
Lawson was awarded the ID@Xbox Gaming Heroes award at the 21st Independent Games Festival, March 20th 2019, for his leadership in the development of the first cartridge-based gaming console.
The World Video Game Hall of Fame, located at The Strong National Museum of Play, Rochester, New York, displays Lawson’s contributions to the gaming industry.
Gerald ‘Jerry” Lawson, one month after receiving the IGDA honor, died April 9, 2011. He was diabetic.
The Los Angeles Unified School District has given Elementary School #11 the Gerald A. Lawson Academy of the Arts, Mathematics, and Science.
Bayer Mack, director of The Czar of Black Hollywood and Block Starz Music Television’s Profiles of African-American Success television series, produced and released a documentary about Lawson and his work with Fairchild Channel F.
In the premiere episode of Netflix’s limited-series documentary High Score (released August 19, 2020), Jerry Lawson’s story was told also by his children, Karen, and Anderson.
The first episode of Season 6: Command Line Heroes, “Jerry Lawson – The Engineer Who Changed The Game”, features his work on Channel F.
Gerald ‘Jerry” Lawson, along with other pioneers of the early videogame industry Nolan Bushnell or Ralph Baer, is also prominently featured in the second episode of History’s The Toys That Built America.
Take Two Interactive and University of Southern California Games Program established the Gerald A. Lawson Fund in May 2021 to support black and indigenous students who are pursuing careers within the videogame industry. Microsoft began contributing to this fund in August 2021.
Lawson was honored with a Google Doodle on December 1, 2022 that allowed users to create and modify in-built games.
Google Game Doodle for Gerald ‘Jerry” Lawson’s 82nd birthday
Today’s interactive Doodle on Google celebrates Gerald Lawson’s 82nd Birthday. Gerald “Jerry” Lawson was a pioneer in modern gaming. He led the team that developed the first home gaming system that allowed for the swapping of game cartridges. Lawson’s children were the inspiration for the Doodle and the games.
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Google created a series of interactive Doodle games in honor of Jerry Lawson’s 82nd Birthday on Thursday. These games look like early videogames from the 1970s and take you through Lawson’s life. You can also create or modify an existing video game.