Gerald A. Lawson - African American Video Games Pioneer
Gerald Lawson was born in Brooklyn New York,., December 1, 1940 and past away April 9th at the age of 70 in Santa Clara, California. Gerald or Jerry as his peers refered to him, was the first and only African American pioneering and challenging the innovations in the gaming industry in its early years back in the early 1970's. Jerry Lawson lead the team that created the Fairchild Channel F, the world's first ROM based cartridge video game console. His work in the video gaming industry propelled competitors and other gaming industry alike to be what it is today. While growing up in the urban settings of Queens, New York, even as an teenager he began to excel in the science of electronics with Ham radios and walky talkies. Gerald Lawson's early entrepreneurial spirit helped him managed to setup a small Queens radio station in his housing development at the age of 13 and was the local handyman in his neighborhood. As an adult, Lawson studied engineering and found jobs with Like ITT and Grumman Aircraft. After taking a job at Fairchild, he built a coin-op video game in his garage. In 1976, Fairchild asked for a duplicate, making it the first game cartridge in history. The Queens, NY, native was as a self-taught electronics guru of his time with a craving for technology in the areas of electronics and gaming. His passion for electronics, which he later found was inherited through the men in his life beggining with with grandfather whom was an educated physist in the early <b>...</b>
gerald lawson inventor african american creator video games industry queens Channel technology TV Pow played via broadcast television engineering career santa clara california april 2011 steve jobs In the 1970's and 1980's notably only black member of Homebrew Computer Club notorious group software nerds budding hackers who met Silicon Valley. Some his peers included PC pioneer Lee Felsenstein Apple founders Wozniak computer
