Gerald Lawson Is The Reason Your Xbox Works The Way It Does

In 1972, Atari introduced the first commercially successful video game- Pong, which was a smash hit in arcades across America. The entertainment industry was forever changed and with that change came a flood of companies who wanted to cash in on the advent of electronic gaming. Unfortunately, each game was housed on its own system, so if someone wanted a new game, they would have to buy a brand new piece of hardware. To bring some fresh perspective, it would be like buying a Playstation that could only play one game and every time you wanted to play a different game you’d have to buy another Playstation.

Who would’ve guessed that a self-taught engineer would emerge four years later in Silicon Valley as the director of engineering and marketing for Fairchild Semiconductor’s video game division and lead them to enable an international business model, which is still used almost forty years later? In 1976, Gerald A. Lawson pioneered video games by bringing to market the Fairchild Channel F, the first home console that allowed users to play different games contained on removable cartridges. Now Fairfield could sell individual games separate from the console itself, a model which remains the cornerstone of video gaming. This paved the way for all future video game systems, including the popular Atari system that would come a few years later.

In an NY Times interview, Lawson would expand on his contributions to the video game industry further by noting that he also created one of the earliest arcade games, Demolition Derby, a multiplayer racing game.

After inventing the game seen above, Lawson was promoted. In the aforementioned 2009 interview he reflects on his days spent with Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak (later the founders of Apple) in the hobbyists’ group known as ‘the Homebrew Computer Club’. He states,

“I was not impressed with them — either one of them, actually,”

In 1980, Lawson left Fairchild Semiconductor and founded his own company, Videosoft. The attempt to make video games that were educational as much as they were fun was not one that was well-received in America. Much like the early pioneers of hip-hop, Lawson wanted to entertain and educate simultaneously but the masses weren’t very receptive to his efforts. His Santa Clara, California company eventually made games for Parker Brothers, Mattel, CBS, and Amiga.

Thirty years later, at the age of 70, “Jerry” Lawson passed away- the cause of which was diabetes- and was survived by his wife, brother, and two children, Karen and Marc in Smyrna, Georgia.

-Gerald Lawson, holding his home video game console Channel F System II