London Daily

Focus on the big picture.
Wednesday, Oct 15, 2025

Sony, Nintendo, Microsoft can thank a black engineer for interchangeable games: how Jerry Lawson changed the face of the video game industry

Lawson oversaw the creation of the Channel F, the first video game console with interchangeable game cartridges. One of the few black engineers in the industry at the time, Lawson established the concept of a console that could play an unlimited number of games

Atari. Magnavox. Intellivision. Each evokes memories of the golden age of video games, which brought the first wave of consoles people could connect to their home television. But there is an oft-forgotten person from that era whose contributions to the industry still resonate today: a black engineer named Jerry Lawson.

Lawson oversaw the creation of the Channel F, the first video game console with interchangeable game cartridges – something the first Atari and Magnavox Odyssey systems did not use.

Those initial consoles had a selection of games hard-wired into the console itself. (The Magnavox Odyssey, released in 1972, also used game “cards” that were printed circuit boards, but did not contain game data as the subsequent cartridges did.)

But Lawson, an engineer and designer at Fairchild Camera and Instrument, led a team at the Silicon Valley semiconductor maker charged with creating a game system using Fairchild’s F8 microprocessor and storing games on cartridges.

“A lot of people in the industry swore that a microprocessor couldn’t be used in video games and I knew better,” Lawson said during a speech at the 2005 Classic Gaming Expo in San Francisco.

The Fairchild Video Entertainment System, later named the Channel F (for “fun”), which began selling in 1976, had games such as hockey, tennis, blackjack and a maze game that foreshadowed Pac-Man.

The console beat the Atari 2600 to market by one year, but Atari’s name recognition and marketing heft essentially pushed the Channel F into video game history obscurity. The system would sell about 250,000 units while the Atari 2600, which would get hits such as Space Invaders and Asteroids, would go on to sell about 30 million units.

Regardless, the Channel F established the concept of a console that could play an unlimited number of games, the foundation for today’s global video game market, which is projected to surpass US$160 billion in 2020, according to research firm Newzoo.

Lawson, who died in 2011 at the age of 70 because of complications of diabetes, “literally created an industry that is bigger than the movie industry”, said John William Templeton, executive producer of curriculum and content for Reunion: Education-Arts-Heritage, which creates programming for schools.

A groundbreaker as one of the few black engineers in the industry at the time, Lawson grew up in Queens, New York in the United States. He was a lifelong inventor who attended university but did not earn a degree, according to his obituary in The New York Times. As a teen, he made money by repairing televisions.

After he moved to the Bay Area and was working at Fairchild, Lawson belonged to a home inventors club that included Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak, the pair that would go on to found Apple. Lawson also built his own coin-operated arcade game called Demolition Derby in his garage, which led Fairchild to ask him to focus on games, according to an interview in 2009 with Vintage Computing and Gaming.

When he left Fairchild, Lawson founded his own video game company, Videosoft, which created games for the Atari 2600 and made some of the first 3D games. He closed the company during the video game crash of the mid-1980s.

Lawson got some recognition before he died – he was included in the 2009 documentary, Freedom Riders of the Cutting Edge, produced by Templeton.

Soon after that, Templeton mentioned Lawson to Joseph Saulter, chairman of the diversity advisory board of the International Game Developers Association (IGDA).

“I just said to him, ‘Well, you know the person who did the first video game console was black.’ He just literally stopped in his tracks,” Templeton said. “[I said] I just interviewed him, I can bring him over and have him speak to folks.”

As a result, Lawson was invited to a Blacks in Gaming gathering at the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco in 2011.

“The most important part of it was that there were maybe 70 or so black developers there listening to him,” Templeton said. “It was just extremely emotional for them because for their entire lives, their professional lives, they had been feeling like outsiders, and then they [could say], ‘Hey, wait a minute, somebody who looks like me started the whole thing.’”

Gordon Bellamy, who at the time was the IGDA’s executive director, recalled how the event helped younger black Americans working in video games embrace “our reality, to learn and value and celebrate the very history of how our careers were built on [Lawson’s legacy]”, he said.
An exhibit of Lawson’s handiwork is on permanent display at The World Video Game Hall of Fame at The Strong National Museum of Play in Rochester, New York. There, you can see the Channel F game system and some of Videosoft’s games. The museum has Lawson’s papers in its archive, too.

Lawson and the Channel F game system are also included in A History of Video Games in 64 Objects, a book published by the museum in 2018.

Among the museum’s missions is bringing to light the contributions of minorities and women in the video game industry. Lawson’s contributions counter a lack of representation of black game developers in the industry, said Jeremy Saucier, an assistant vice-president for interpretation and electronic games at the museum.

“The major figures often tend to be white men,” Saucier said. “We really want to get the history right and tell a more inclusive history than the meta-narrative that we have stuck with in the past.”

As he aged, Lawson became upset with how video games glorified violence.

“Most of the games that are out now – I’m appalled by them,” he told Vintage Computing and Gaming. “They’re all scenario games considered with shooting somebody and killing somebody. 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. That’s what a game is to me.”

Newsletter

Related Articles

0:00
0:00
Close
Erika Kirk Delivers Moving Tribute at White House as Trump Awards Charlie Presidential Medal of Freedom
British Food Influencer ‘Big John’ Detained in Australia After Visa Dispute
ScamBodia: The Chinese Fraud Empire Shielded by Cambodia’s Ruling Elite
French PM Suspends Macron’s Pension Reform Until After 2027 in Bid to Stabilize Government
Orange, Bouygues and Free Make €17 Billion Bid for Drahi’s Altice France Telecom Assets
Dutch Government Seizes Chipmaker After U.S. Presses for Removal of Chinese CEO
Bessent Accuses China of Dragging Down Global Economy Amid New Trade Curbs
U.S. Revokes Visas of Foreign Nationals Who ‘Celebrated’ Charlie Kirk’s Assassination
AI and Cybersecurity at Forefront as GITEX Global 2025 Kicks Off in Dubai
DJI Loses Appeal to Remove Pentagon’s ‘Chinese Military Company’ Label
EU Deploys New Biometric Entry/Exit System: What Non-EU Travelers Must Know
Australian Prime Minister’s Private Number Exposed Through AI Contact Scraper
Ex-Microsoft Engineer Confirms Famous Windows XP Key Was Leaked Corporate License, Not a Hack
China’s lesson for the US: it takes more than chips to win the AI race
Australia Faces Demographic Risk as Fertility Falls to Record Low
California County Reinstates Mask Mandate in Health Facilities as Respiratory Illness Risk Rises
Israel and Hamas Agree to First Phase of Trump-Brokered Gaza Truce, Hostages to Be Freed
French Political Turmoil Elevates Marine Le Pen as Rassemblement National Poised for Power
China Unveils Sweeping Rare Earth Export Controls to Shield ‘National Security’
The Davos Set in Decline: Why the World Economic Forum’s Power Must Be Challenged
France: Less Than a Month After His Appointment, the New French Prime Minister Resigns
Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán stated that Hungary will not adopt the euro because the European Union is falling apart.
Sarah Mullally Becomes First Woman Appointed Archbishop of Canterbury
Mayor in western Germany in intensive care after stabbing
Australian government pays Deloitte nearly half a million dollars for a report built on fabricated quotes, fake citations, and AI-generated nonsense.
US Prosecutors Gained Legal Approval to Hack Telegram Servers
Macron Faces Intensifying Pressure to Resign or Trigger New Elections Amid France’s Political Turmoil
Standard Chartered Names Roberto Hoornweg as Sole Head of Corporate & Investment Banking
UK Asylum Housing Firm Faces Backlash Over £187 Million Profits and Poor Living Conditions
UK Police Crack Major Gang in Smuggling of up to 40,000 Stolen Phones to China
BYD’s UK Sales Soar Nearly Nine-Fold, Making Britain Its Biggest Market Outside China
Trump Proposes Farm Bailout from Tariff Revenues Amid Backlash from Other Industries
FIFA Accuses Malaysia of Forging Citizenship Documents, Suspends Seven Footballers
Latvia to Bar Tourist and Occasional Buses to Russia and Belarus Until 2026
A Dollar Coin Featuring Trump’s Portrait Expected to Be Issued Next Year
Australia Orders X to Block Murder Videos, Citing Online Safety and Public Exposure
Three Scientists Awarded Nobel Prize in Medicine for Discovery of Immune Self-Tolerance Mechanism
OpenAI and AMD Forge Landmark AI-Chip Alliance with Equity Option
Munich Airport Reopens After Second Drone Shutdown
France Names New Government Amid Political Crisis
Trump Stands Firm in Shutdown Showdown and Declares War on Drug Cartels — Turning Crisis into Opportunity
Surge of U.S. Billionaires Transforms London’s Peninsula Apartments into Ultra-Luxury Stronghold
Pro Europe and Anti-War Babiš Poised to Return to Power After Czech Parliamentary Vote
Jeff Bezos Calls AI Surge a ‘Good’ Bubble, Urges Focus on Lasting Innovation
Japan’s Ruling Party Chooses Sanae Takaichi, Clearing Path to First Female Prime Minister
Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs Sentenced to Fifty Months in Prison Following Prostitution Conviction
Taylor Swift’s ‘Showgirl’ Launch Extends Billion-Dollar Empire
Trump Administration Launches “TrumpRx” Plan to Enable Direct Drug Sales at Deep Discounts
Trump Announces Intention to Impose 100 Percent Tariff on Foreign-Made Films
Altman Says GPT-5 Already Outpaces Him, Warns AI Could Automate 40% of Work
×