If you love video games, then you must thank engineer Gerald A. Lawson for creating the first home video game system with interchangeable cartridges.
The Queens native was the creator of the Channel F Fairchild Video Entertainment Computer. And he also helped develop one of the first arcade machines, Demolition Derby (which was second to the game Pong), in 1977. Lawson founded Videosoft, which was a video game development company that made software for Atari in the 1980′s.
He was also the only black member of the Homebrew Computer Club, a hobbyist club, which also computer pioneers Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak were a part of.
Lawson died of complications with diabetes in 2011 in Santa Clara, California.
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Where Would Video Games Be Without Gerald A. Lawson? was originally published on giantlife.com
