The Originator

Gerald A. "Jerry" Lawson (December 1940 – April 9, 2011)

Jerry Lawson was the the chief hardware engineer for a largely forgotten video game system called the Fairchild Channel F VES which was released in 1976. What makes the Channel F so important to consumer electronics is that it was the first home video game system that supported interchangeable programmable ROM game cartridges two years before Atari released the VCS a.k.a The Atari 2600. Before this innovation, video game systems were sold with the games already built into the motherboard and most of the time they were just variations of Pong. In short this brother created the blueprint for modern console gaming.

Here is a LINK to an interview he did in 2009 where he goes into detail about his life growing up in Queens, being an African-American engineer in the 1960's, how he was not that impressed with Steve Wozniak, and what he thinks of today's video games. This is really good stuff. Rest in peace sir.