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Gerald An American electronic engineer named Jerry Lawson. The commercial video game cartridge was invented by him. His design work for the Fairchild Channel F video game system is well known. He started the video game business Video-Soft.
He received recognition from the International Game Developers Association as a pioneer in the field. On March 20, 2019, he received the ID@Xbox Gaming Heroes award at the 21st Independent Games Festival in recognition of his leadership in the creation of the first game console that used cartridges.
You can find out everything about Gerald Jerry Lawson’s net worth, wife, death, age, children, nationality, and more in this blog. Gerald “Jerry” Lawson’s wife, who served as inspiration, how did jerry lawson die, jerry lawson’s family, what did jerry lawson invent, Gerald lawson’s net worth, jerry lawson’s inventor net worth, jerry lawson’s video game net worth, and jerry Colangelo’s estimated net worth are some of the topics covered.
Gerald’s 28th birthday is commemorated by a Google Doodle on December 1, 2022. In the Google doodle, Gerald “Jerry” Lawson, one of the pioneers of contemporary gaming, oversaw the creation of the first home video game system, which paved the way for modern gaming consoles.
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Gerald Jerry Lawson Bio & Wiki
Gerald Anderson Lawson was the genuine Gerald, Jerry Lawson. He was created on December 1st, 1940. He died on April 9, 2011, at the age of 70 in Santa Clara, California, in the United States, as a result of complications from diabetes that caused him to lose the use of one leg and vision in one eye.
In United States, he was born in Brooklyn, New York. He received his degree from Queens College. He had a wife named Catherine. He was fortunate to have two kids, Karen and Anderson. He was of African American descent.
Gerald Jerry Lawson’s Net Worth
When Gerald Jerry Lawson passed away, he had a net worth of about $2 million. Having worked as an electronic engineer, he amassed wealth. His yearly compensation was $400,000. His wage was $20,000 per month.
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Gerald Jerry Lawson Early Years
Lawson was born on December 1, 1940, in Brooklyn, New York City. His father, Blanton, was a longshoreman with a scientific interest, while his mother, Mannings, worked for the city and was a member of the local school’s Parents-Teachers Association.
His grandfather had studied to be a scientist but was unable to do so due to racial discrimination and instead worked as a postal. His parents made certain that he obtained a decent education and supported his interests in scientific activities such as ham radio and chemistry.
Furthermore, Lawson stated that his first-grade teacher pushed him to follow in the footsteps of George Washington Carver. As a teenager, he lived in Queens and earned money by repairing television sets. He obtained an amateur radio license at the age of 13 and then built his own station at home using parts purchased from local electrical stores with his own money. He attended Queens College and City College of New York but did not graduate from either.
Gerald Jerry Lawson’s Career
The Fairchild Channel F, with the cartridge slot to the unit’s right. In 1970, he began working as an applications engineering consultant in the sales section of Fairchild Semiconductor in San Francisco. In his garage, he developed Demolition Derby, an early coin-operated arcade game.
Demolition Derby, which was completed in early 1975 using Fairchild’s new F8 microprocessors, was one of the first microprocessor-driven games. Lawson was promoted to Chief Hardware Engineer and Director of Engineering and Marketing for Fairchild’s video game division in the mid-1970s.
He oversaw the creation of the Fairchild Channel F console, which was released in 1976 and was specifically designed to employ swappable game cartridges based on Alpex technology. At the time, most game systems had game programming embedded into the hardware, making it impossible to remove or update. Lawson and his colleagues refined and upgraded Alpex technology that enabled games to be saved as software on removable ROM cartridges.
These could be inserted and removed from a console device repeatedly without risk of electric shock. This would allow consumers to purchase a library of games while also providing a new revenue stream for console manufacturers through game sales.
The Channel F console included a variety of controllers, including Lawson’s novel 8-way joystick and a “pause” button, a first for a home video game console. Channel F was not a financial success, although the cartridge concept was popularised with the advent of the Atari 2600 in 1977.
Lawson and Ron Jones were the only black members of the Homebrew Computer Club, a group of early computer hobbyists that included some well-known figures, including Apple founders Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak. Lawson revealed that he interviewed Wozniak for a job at Fairchild but did not hire him.
Lawson left Fairchild in 1980 to start Video soft, a video game development business that created software for the Atari 2600 in the early 1980s when the 2600 had surpassed Channel F as the market’s top system. Five years later, Video soft went out of business, and Lawson began to do consulting work.
He once collaborated with Stevie Wonder on a “Wonder Clock” that would wake a child with the sound of a parent’s voice, but it never saw the light of day. Lawson later worked with the Stanford mentor program and was planning to publish a book about his life.
Gerald Jerry Lawson’s Death
Lawson began experiencing diabetes issues in 2003, losing the use of one leg and vision in one eye. He died of diabetes complications on April 9, 2011, approximately a month after being honored by the International Game Developers Association (IGDA). He lived in Santa Clara, California, at the time of his death, and was survived by his wife, two children, and brother.
Gerald Jerry Lawson’s Legacy
The International Gaming Developers Association recognized Lawson as an industry pioneer in March 2011 for his work on the game cartridge concept (IGDA). Lawson received the ID@Xbox Gaming Heroes award on March 20, 2019, at the 21st Independent Games Festival for leading the development of the first cartridge-based game system.
The World Video Game Hall of Fame at The Strong National Museum of Play in Rochester, New York has a permanent display highlighting Lawson’s contributions to the gaming business. Gerald A. Lawson Academy of the Arts, Mathematics, and Science is the name given by the Los Angeles Unified School District to Elementary School #11.
Bayer Mack, the filmmaker of The Czar of Black Hollywood, made a short documentary on Lawson and his development of the Fairchild Channel F, which was released by Block Starz Music Television as part of their Profiles of African-American Success video series.
He was also included in the first episode of the Netflix limited-series documentary High Score, which premiered on August 19, 2020, with his children Karen and Anderson telling his story. “Jerry Lawson: The Engineer Who Changed the Game,” the opening episode of Season 6 of Command Line Heroes, is on his work on Channel F. Lawson also appears heavily in the second episode of Hide and Seek’s second season.
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