Jerry got his start building arcade games in his garage for fun. He soon became one of the first Black engineer’s to work in the video game industry. In 1976 Jerry led the team that developed the Revolutionary first video game cartridge.
Jerry’s work unlocked a whole new way for everyone to play and make video games. General ‘Jerry’ Lawson was an American electronic engineer who was fathers of modern gaming.
General Jerry Lawson google doodle is showing to honour Gerald ‘Jerry’ Lawson on this day in many countries.
Jerry Lawson was born and brought up in Brooklyn, New York on December 1, 1940. He completed his studies from Queens college & city college of New York before starting his career in Palo Alto, California.
At that time, the city and their surrounding region had become known after arriving in California. Gerry Lawson tied up with Fairchild Semiconductor as an engineering consultant.
After a few years, Lawson was appointed as Director of Engineering & marketing of Fairchild’s video game department. Where he conducted the development of the Fairchild.
Channel F system (the ‘F’ stood for fun!). This was the first home video technique that featured interchangeable game cartridges. In that system, it had a 8-way digital joystick and a pause menu.
In 1980, Lawson left Fairchild and started his own company. VideoSoft was one of the earliest Black-owned video game expansion companies. The company developed software for the Atari 2600. Lawson had firmed up himself as a frontier person in the industry. He proceeded to consult multiple engineering & video game companies throughout the respite of his career.
In 2011, the International Game Developers Association acknowledged Lawson as an initiative trailblazer for his contributions to gaming and development.
The University of Southern California also built the Gerald A. Lawson reserves to support underrepresented scholars who wish to pursue undergraduate or graduate phases in game technique or computer science.
Dawson’s accomplishments are immortalised at the world Video Game Hall of Fame in Rochester, New York.