Following on from Black History Month, we tell the story of Gerald Anderson Lawson – one of gaming’s sadly overshadowed pioneers, whose contributions to the industry in the 1970s have shaped the way we all enjoy video games today.
Jerry Lawson is truly one of gaming’s largely forgotten greats. Most people, even those claiming to be gaming history enthusiasts, have never even heard of Lawson- until recently, he’s remained an unsung hero compared to other important figures in the games development sphere, despite being credited as the inventor of the game cartridge, an integral first step in moving gaming towards removable media, which many of us continue to buy for our systems to this day.
Jerry Lawson was born on 1 December 1940, and grew up in Queens, New York, loving science, like both his father and grandfather before him. His grandfather wanted to pursue a career as a physicist and had been trained in the field, but was ultimately blocked due to being Black, which meant he could only get a job at the post office. Jerry’s father chose to be a longshoreman, but encouraged Jerry to experiment with science growing up.
One Christmas as a child, Jerry wanted a toy laboratory, but his mother couldn’t afford it at the time, so instead bought him a radio receiver, inadvertently kickstarting his fascination for not just all things engineering, but also HAM radios. While in high school, he would frequent electronics stores, and over the course of several months gathered a myriad of components, until he was able to build a fully functioning radio station, transmitting right from his bedroom.
Lawson continued to pursue his passions through adulthood, going on to study Electronics at both Queen’s College and City College of New York. He then worked on several projects for the US Military before becoming a freelancer at Fairchild Semiconductor, who were known for working on the Apollo space missions. Fairchild seemed an unlikely fit for a video game company, at least for now.
Thanks to a company called Syzygy (who would later become Atari), the potential of arcade games had generated a lot of hype after the release of Pong, and after helping them out with some issues they’d been having with one of their games, Jerry decided he was going to create his own video game; no easy feat.
Demolition Derby was Jerry’s first contribution to the world of video games, and it turned some heads – the design of the arcade machine was rather striking, with two steering wheel controls to be used by multiple players, each with a ‘gear shift’ (most games that were around at the time were just knockoffs of Pong). The game would go on to be a relative success; enough to grab the attention of Fairchild, who approached him with a proposition.
Fairchild had decided that they wanted to get into producing their own video games, and were working with a company called Alpex. Impressed by Jerry’s success with Demolition Derby, Fairchild consulted him (on the down low) to ask if a game that Alpex had could also work on the processors that Fairchild designed.
During this, Jerry pitched a prototype video game console to the Vice President of Fairchild. Impressed with his work, he allocated Jerry a budget and a team to produce the Fairchild Channel F – and two engineers at Alpex, Wallace Kirshner and Lawrence Haskel, had a nifty idea about using removable plastic cartridges to house the games.
Jerry and his team turned the technology into a reality, and the Fairchild Channel F was released in North America in November 1976 – the very first consumer video game console to use interchangeable game cartridges. Previously, games had been hardwired into game consoles, meaning that if you wanted to play a new game that wasn’t already built into the system you owned, you had to buy a whole new console to do it. Jerry’s breakthrough made waves, inspiring consoles such as the Atari 2600, released just a year later, along with a plethora of other subsequently released consoles to use game cartridges.
Credit: By Evan-Amos – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=18291554
The Channel F has been credited as the first console to have a ‘pause’ function, and the first console to support ‘player vs computer’ games. Unfortunately, despite its cutting edge technology, the system didn’t sell well due to its hefty price tag ($169.95, equivalent to $763.58 in 2019), and being overshadowed by its competitors (especially the Atari 2600, released one year later), leaving it to fade into relative obscurity. Jerry went on to form his own company, Videosoft, and made a number of games for the Atari 2600. Though Jerry Lawson never officially retired, he would ‘leave’ the video game industry in 1984 during the North American Video Game Crash, but continued to work as a consultant.
Jerry’s story remained relatively unknown until he was spotted at Vintage Computer Festival 9.0 by Journalist and Tech Historian Benj Edwards, who saw Jerry buying a copy of Color Bar Generator from an Atari game reseller. Edwards had read about Lawson in an issue of Popular Computing, but couldn’t verify at the time whether or not he had just met him, until learning that Lawson was attending the event to deliver a presentation titled “The Story of the Fairchild Channel F Video Game System.” After the event, Edwards got in touch with Lawson and interviewed him over the phone in 2009, before publishing it on his website.
In this interview with Edwards, Jerry revealed one example of racial discrimination he had experienced in his career:
“I’ve had instances where I’ve walked into places where they didn’t know I was Black. Not that the guy was a racist, but a guy named John Ellis, who was one of the Atari people. And he looked kind of strange. I said, “What’s the matter with you, John?” He said, “I’ve always known you as Jerry Lawson. I didn’t know you were the same video game guy Jerry Lawson — I didn’t know you were Black!” I said, “Well I don’t go around telling everybody I’m Black.” I just do my job, you know?”
Edwards’ article eventually got the attention of Joseph Saulter, Chairperson of the International Game Developers Association’s (IGDA) Diversity Advisory Board, who left a comment online in 2011:
“The moment I found this article I began to cry. I was overwhelmed with a gratitude and respect. Yet dismayed by the unjustified omission of Jerry Lawson from the History of our incredible industry,” he said.
“Not once did I hear about Jerry. He is a true treasure to all in the video game industry.”
Two weeks later, Jerry was honoured by the IGDA, finally being recognised for his role as a pioneer in the video game industry. Just one month later, on April 9, 2011, at the age of 70, Jerry sadly passed away.
Posthumously, Jerry received the ID@Xbox Gaming Heroes award in 2019 for designing the first cartridge based game console, and the IGDA founded the Jerry Lawson Award for Achievement in Game Development to celebrate the accomplishments of under-represented minorities working within the game development sphere.
Jerry’s ingenuity to develop game cartridge technology paved the way for future consoles, which all still use variations of removable media to this day; Nintendo’s current generation console, the Switch, still uses cartridges to house its games, despite being released 40 years after the Channel F.
After having such an influence on the video game industry, it’s only right that Jerry Lawson gets the recognition he deserves.
Featured image credit: Wikimedia user ‘OU133’ (edited)
