Google Doodle celebrates life of Brooklyn native Jerry Lawson ‘father of modern gaming’

Dec 01, 2022, 1:46pmUpdated 2h ago

By: News 12 Staff

Google Doodle is celebrating the life of Brooklyn native Jerry Lawson, a Black engineer known as one of the ‘fathers of modern gaming’.

Lawson was one of the fathers of modern gaming who led the team that developed the first home video gaming system with interchangeable game cartridges.

The Google Doodle is featured on Google’s homepage search bar, and includes an interactive game where users can play as Lawson while jumping around a small map to learn about his legacy.

Lawson was born in Brooklyn, New York on this day in 1940.

After attending Queens College, City University of New York, Lawson moved to California where he joined Fairchild Semiconductor as an engineering consultant. He eventually led the video game department development team of the Channel F system. The Channel F system was the first home video game system console that featured interchangeable game cartridges, an 8-way digital joystick and a pause menu.

A year after its release the Channel F system would be eclipsed by the much more successful Atari 2600.

Despite the Channel F’s failure to take off, Lawson’s achievements are memorialized at the World Video Game Hall of Fame in Rochester, New York.  

Lawson died in 2011 and would have been 82-years-old.