How did a self-taught engineer change the game by changing the way we game?

Who is Jerry Lawson, the man honored in today’s google doodle?

If you were an old-school gamer in the 80’s or 90’s, you’ve probably got fond memories of popping in a cartridge in your console to enjoy your favourite games - whether it was Super Mario, Duck Hunt, or Street Fighter. And you’ve got Gerald Lawson to thank for that little cartridge.

Electronics Prodigy

Gerald ‘Jerry’ Lawson, born on December 1, 1940, in Brooklyn, New York, was the son of blue-collar workers, who encouraged Jerry’s intellectual pursuits and burgeoning interest in electronics. As a child, he started his self-taught journey in electronics by broadcasting his own ham radio station from his bedroom, building and selling walkie-talkies, and television repair.?

Tech Training

He moved west to California’s Silicon Valley where he eventually settled at Fairchild Semiconductor in the early 1970s. Along with other Silicon Valley innovators, he belonged to a hobbyists’ group known as the Homebrew Computer Club. Two of its other notable members were Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak.?

Garage Gamer

In the early 1970s, most video games were only available on mainframe computers in university labs. Lawson outfitted his own Digital Equipment Corporation PDP-8 minicomputer in his garage and played the space-themed, text-only game Lunar Lander on it. He also built his own coin operated arcade game “Demolition Derby” powered by Fairchild’s F8 microprocessor.

The Console that changed gaming

After his arcade game caught the attention of his colleagues, In 1975, Lawson was chosen to lead the company’s video game division. He helped build the Fairchild Channel F, the first cartridge-based home gaming console - ever!

Before the release of Fairchild’s Channel F in 1976, home video games came hardwired into consoles. So if you wanted to change the games you were playing, you would have to change your console as well. The interchangeable game cartridge made by Lawson was a true game-changer that supercharged today’s massive game industry. The potential of playing dozens, or even hundreds of individual games on a platform unlocked the possibility of selling tens of millions of games.

He successfully decoupled the software from the hardware. And that’s the model that is still followed today. We moved from cartridges to CDs, DVDs and now streaming. Some consoles like the Nintendo Switch use SD drives as cartridges. All of these are essentially different mediums to house the game, built on the same technologymodel.

Lawson’s Legacy

“I don’t play video games that often; I really don’t,” he said in the 2009 interview. “First of all, most of the games that are out now — I’m appalled by them.” Most are concerned with “shooting somebody and killing somebody,” he said.

“To me, a game should be something like a skill you should develop — if you play this game, you walk away with something of value.”

Lawson’s words echo our own values. Our founders have always believed in making games like that impart skills and we are happy to carry on his legacy in our own small way.