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Lawson began his lifelong hobby of tinkering while growing in the Queens projects of New York City. He gravitated towards to the engineer side of things because of his passion of all things technical and technological. He owned and managed his own radio transmitter when he was younger, and as a teenager, he repaired televisions for his neighbours to earn money.
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Lawson founded the video game creation company Videosoft and utilised it to make Atari 2600 cartridges. The Channel F was practically rendered obsolete when the 2600 was released. Sadly, the business only offered one, a product for technicians named Color Bar Generator.
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Other legends like the creators of Apple, Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak, were from the Homebrew Computer Science department, an early group of computer amateurs. Lawson and Jones were the only members of colour. Jones created a method for reprogramming inkjet printers so that desktop computers could produce printing that was comparable to silk-screen quality, and in 1999 he also had the brilliant idea of turning Nintendo's Game Boy into a portable music player.
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On the eve of his eventual passing, in March 2011, Lawson was honored as an industry pioneer by the International Game Developers Association. His accomplishments as an engineer and inventor were appreciated by the IGDA. A month later he passed away from complications of diabetes.
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Only a few weeks after Allan Alcorn's Pong made its debut in a Southern California pizzeria, Lawson's Demolition Derby was one of the first video games to be released in arcades. Later, Lawson worked with the Stanford University mentor programme in an effort to produce a book about his professional life.
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The Fairchild Channel F had one advantage over its rivals despite not achieving the same levels of success as the Atari, Nintendo, or Sega: an interchangeable game cartridge. The Channel F produced 26 cartridges that covered a variety of genres, including sports, cards, and sci-fi (Space War), and it was introduced a year before the Atari's video computer system (Bowling). Games were integrated into the hardware of gaming consoles like the Atari and the Magnavox Odyssey (designed by the late, great Ralph Baer).
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Few people in the rapidly expanding video game business thought a console's microprocessor would function independently. With his outstanding creation, Lawson not only broadened culture, but he also innovated it. The Fairchild F8 CPU, which was used for the first time in the Channel F home gaming system, was created by Mr. Lawson. The F8 had more inputs and outputs than previous recent chips, making it much more complicated than the standard integrated circuits of the time. At the time, there were no chip packaging options with enough pins, therefore the F8 was created as a pair of chips that were combined to create a full CPU.
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His father, a longshoreman, had a strong affinity for all things science. At a young age, Lawson was gifted interesting items like an Irish mail, which is a handcar typically used by railroad workers. His mother was so vested into his education that she made it so that Jerry attended a well-regarded elementary school. She eventually became the president of the PTA.
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He admitted in an interview with Vintage Computing that he had a portrait of George Washington Carver hanging on the wall next to his desk. "My first-grade teacher then said, "This may be you." I mean, I still remember where it was and how that photo looked."
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Most of what Lawson knew about engineering, including how to operate an amateur radio program from out his housing project and fix his neighbours' television sets, was self-taught. Before applying his skills to companies like Mitsubishi Electric and Government Aircraft, he completed Queens College and the Community College of New York. He progressed from using his window as an antenna while holding a radio licence to playing a significant role in Silicon Valley.
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Nothing similar to what Lawson was proposing had ever been done. The idea of interchangeable cartridges was novel. The FCC was intrigued by the fact that Lawson invented his own microprocessor before them. The FCC had to approve each and every cartridge that Lawson created (26 to be exact).
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Lawson was a sight to behold in a field largely associated with nerd culture at 6 feet 6 inches tall. In an interview he conducted with Vintage Computing, he claimed that race had "both a plus and a minus" impact on his employment prospects. He would get great renown if he succeeded. If he failed, it would be noted as an anticipated letdown. Throughout it all, he inspired other young Black men and women to pursue careers in engineering and science.
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