Jerry
Lawson, a self-taught engineer, gave us video game cartridges
To celebrate Black History Month, Engadget is running a series
of profiles honoring African-American pioneers in the world of science and
technology. Today we take a look at the life and work of Jerry Lawson.
If you've got fond memories of blowing into video game
cartridges, you've got Gerald "Jerry" Lawson to thank. As the head of
engineering and marketing for Fairchild Semiconductor's gaming outfit in the
mid-'70s, Lawson developed the first home gaming console that utilized
interchangeable cartridges, the Fairchild Channel F. That system never saw the
heights of popularity of consoles from Atari, Nintendo and Sega, but it was a
significant step forward for the entire gaming industry. Prior to the Channel
F, games like Pong were built directly into their hardware -- there was no
swapping them out to play something else -- and few believed that you could
even give a console a microprocessor of its own. Lawson, who passed
away at 70 from diabetes complications in
2011, was the first major African-American figure in the game industry. And,
just like the tech world today, it still isn't as diverse as it should be.
Only 2 percent of game developers in 2005 were
African-American, according to a study by the International
Game Developer Association(who also honored
Lawson as a game pioneer a month before his death). But things were even worse
during Lawson's time: For his first five years at Fairchild, the company and
its executives actually thought he was Indian. He was also one of two black
members of the Homebrew Computing Club, a group that famously included Steve
Jobs, Steve Wozniak and other Silicon Valley pioneers.
Born
on December 1, 1940, Lawson grew up in a Queens, New York, housing project,
where his predilection for engineering was on display early on. His father, a
longshoreman with a fondness for science, gave him unique gifts like an Irish
mail, a handcar typically used by railroad workers. More often than not, Lawson
ended up being the only kid that knew how to use them. His mother arranged it
so that he could attend a well-regarded elementary school in another part of
the city (i.e., one that was predominantly white), and she stayed actively
involved in his education throughout his childhood (so much so that she became
the president of the PTA). Lawson also credits his first grade teacher as a
major inspiration.
"I had a picture of George Washington Carver [a
black inventor who was born into slavery] on the wall next to my desk," he
told Vintage Computingin
an interview. "And she said, 'This could be you.' I mean, I can still
remember that picture, still remember where it was."
It's
hard to deny Lawson's geek cred: He ran an amateur radio station out of his
housing project after building a ham radio on his own (complete with an antenna
hanging out of his window and a radio license). He also spent his teenage years
repairing electronics all over the city. Most impressively, he taught himself
most of what he knew about engineering. Lawson attended Queens College and the
City College of New York before working at several firms, including Grumman
Electric and Federal Aircraft. After scoring a job with Kaiser Electronics,
which focused on military technology, Lawson moved to Silicon Valley.
It's
hard to fathom today, but trying to make removable game cartridges was an
incredibly new concept in the '70s. Lawson and his team at Fairchild had no
clue how the cartridges would fare after being plugged in and out multiple
times -- remember, nobody had ever done it before. The company also caught the
attention of the FCC, as it was aiming to deliver the first consumer device
with its own microprocessor. Lawson's description of meeting the agency's
grueling requirements reads like engineering comedy: Fairchild had to encase
the console's motherboard in aluminum; it put a metal chute over the cartridge
adapter to keep in radiation; and every cartridge it produced had to be
approved by the FCC. He was also justifiably apoplectic when, years later, Texas
Instruments successfully lobbied to change the laws that determined the FCC's
harsh requirements.
As for
how race affected his job prospects during the '60s and '70s, Lawson told Vintage Computing it "could be both
a plus and a minus." If he did well, it seemed as if he did twice as well,
since any accomplishment received instant notoriety. But the idea of a
6-foot-6-inch black man working as an engineer was still surprising to many
people. Lawson noted that some people reacted with "total shock" when
they saw him for the first time.
Lawson
also had plenty of insightful advice for young black men and women who were
interested in science and engineering careers:
First of all, get them to consider it [technical careers] in the
first place. That's key. Even considering the thing. They need to understand
that they're in a land by themselves. Don't look for your buddies to be
helpful, because they won't be. You've gotta step away from the crowd and go do
your own thing. You find a ground; cover it; it's brand-new; you're on your own
-- you're an explorer. That's about what it's going to be like. Explore new
vistas, new avenues, new ways -- not relying on everyone else's way to tell you
which way to go, and how to go, and what you should be doing.
"The whole reason I did games was because people
said, 'You can't do it,'" Lawson told the San Jose Mercury News in an interview. "I'm one of the guys, if you
tell me I can't do something, I'll turn around and do it."
[Photo credits: The Estate of Jerry Lawson (Jerry
Lawson);
Doug Kline/Flickr (Fairchild Channel F system)]
