BEGIN:VCALENDAR VERSION:2.0 PRODID:-//InvisionCommunity Events 4.7.23//EN METHOD:PUBLISH CALSCALE:GREGORIAN REFRESH-INTERVAL:PT15M X-PUBLISHED-TTL:PT15M X-WR-CALNAME:RMCommunityCalendar NAME:RMCommunityCalendar BEGIN:VTIMEZONE TZID:Europe/London TZURL:http://tzurl.org/zoneinfo/Europe/London X-LIC-LOCATION:Europe/London BEGIN:DAYLIGHT TZOFFSETFROM:+0000 TZOFFSETTO:+0100 TZNAME:BST DTSTART:20250330T020000Z RRULE:FREQ=YEARLY;BYMONTH=3;BYDAY=-1SU END:DAYLIGHT BEGIN:STANDARD TZOFFSETFROM:+0100 TZOFFSETTO:+0000 TZNAME:GMT DTSTART:20251026T020000Z RRULE:FREQ=YEARLY;BYMONTH=10;BYDAY=-1SU END:STANDARD END:VTIMEZONE BEGIN:VEVENT SUMMARY:Jerry Lawson's birthday DTSTAMP:20251018T235303Z SEQUENCE:0 UID:546-7-c3fe8195a3dde498d013e477e2142422@aalbc.com ORGANIZER;CN="richardmurray":troy@aalbc.com DESCRIPTION:\n He was born 1940 December 1st\n\n\n\n To learn more click the link to the Black Games Elite post or just read on\n\n\n\n https://aa lbc.com/tc/blogs/entry/341-jerry-lawson-82nd-2022-december-1st/\n\n\n\n   \n\n\n\n CONTENT\n\n\n\n Jerry Lawson\n\n\n\n Play and Create a game\n\n\n \n \n\n\n\n https://g.co/doodle/pky25gd\n\n\n\n  \n\n\n\n \n\n\n\n VIDEOS OFT a company he founded\n\n\n\n https://www.ataricompendium.com/archives/ articles/videosoft/videosoft.html\n\n\n\n from the website above\n\n\n\n  \n\n\n\n ATARI VCS/2600 VideoSoft\n\n\n\n By Daryl Lytle\n\n\n\n  \n\n\ n\n Back on December 15th\, 2010\, Scott Stilphen announced that not only had 6 \"long lost\" Atari VCS prototype games by VideoSoft been found\, bu t that 100 boxed copies of each were available to buy! In February of 2011 \, I wrote up reviews of all 6 games (which can be found on this site - li nks are at the end).\n\n \n\n Of the three non-3D games\, they claim that two of the three - Atom Smasher and S.A.C. Alert - are complete. I conside r all three of three non-3D games complete. The game\, Depth Charge was su pposed to also have a second level that was similar to Sega's Sub Scan 3D (minus the 3D). This game can stand on it's own as a completed game. You c an make your own decision on this. All three non 3D games were fun. I enjo yed them and I will continue to play these games for quite some time.\n\n \n\n As far as the 3D games are concerned\, first and foremost Genesis 3D is a great little game. The 3D was decent\, and it was in the same game pl ay vein as Tempest. This is the only 3D game that was also considered comp leted. It has a decent replay value because it was challenging and fast-pa ced. It was a lot of fun to play the Ghost Attack 3D game. I really wish t his title would have been completed back in the early 80s\, but I'm really happy the fact that the people who put this together went ahead and made a menu driven 16K multi-cart and put all three levels on it for the sake o f completeness. That made it worth the hefty price tag it carries. There i s a little replay value with this title. The third 3D title\, Havoc 3D\, w ould have been a great title had it been completed. Unfortunately\, due to the fact that you can only play this game once and have to reset it\, it doesn't give it a lot of replay value. The 3D games are a really cool set of games/demos. They are more of a novelty set of games\, something differ ent and fresh.\n\n \n\n As for the 3D effect\, I find that if the room is dark and I sit approx 7 feet away from my 36-inch regular CRT TV\, I can s ee the 3D effect. There are so many things that can play a factor in 'seei ng' the 3D effect\, (or messing it up)\, so it's not going to work for eve ryone. Many things play a factor in getting the 3D effect to work properly . People's vision (or lack of)\, the type of screen you are using (CRT\, L ED\, LCD\, Plasma\, Monitor)\, brightness and contrast of the screen you a re using\, and the brightness in the room. It took me a while testing diff erent things to get this right with the different games\, so I don't think of this as something that will work for everyone. Some people are going t o try one title\, it may not work for them and they are going to throw the game in their collection and say\, \"The 3D sucked\; it didn't work\". Th at's to be expected. If you aren't willing to try some different combinati ons\, you may have issues. In all fairness\, this isn't exactly Disney/Pix ar's REAL3D that you see in the theatres these days. It was tricky to see the red/blue 3D in the theaters back in the 70s and 80s (I remember Creatu re from the Black Lagoon this way) but it did work.\n\n \n\n Still\, I bel ieve these titles are absolutely worthy of any collector's shelf. I know t hat they are steeper in price individually as opposed to other titles\, but purchased as a set\, not so much. If you buy as a set it's the equiva lence to buying a $35.00 game and paying $5.00 priority shipping\, per tit le\, (or $40.00 a title shipped)\, which isn't that bad. If your budget do esn't allow for it\, grab one or two or wait for the ROM images to be rele ased.\n\n \n\n I would like to thank all of the people who made these titl es available to the public possible after being buried for all these years . A find of this magnitude (c’mon SIX titles!!!) is a once in a lifetime thing. Especially considering that the people who programmed these titles \, Jerry Lawson to name one\, is a classic gaming icon and did a lot of go od things for the CG community. These were the first 2600 titles to attemp t a blue/red 3D effect and for the technology they were working with at th e time\, this isn't all that bad. As for the question of\, \"Why didn't th ey finish the other titles before they released them?\" Who wouldn't have wanted that to happen? But that isn't as practical as it sounds\, that alo ne could have driven the cost up even more and taken years more to release . I can appreciate it being released as the original author left it at the time. As far as I’m concerned\, we got four completed games and two pla yable demos. I\, for one\, am a very happy camper. I purchased two complet e sets (#5 and #99) - one for the collection and one to play.\n\n \n\n Che ck out my reviews of each game\, and 2600 Connection's video footage of ea ch:\n\n\n\n 3-D Genesis\n\n 3-D Ghost Attack\n\n 3-D Havoc\n\n Atom Smashe r\n\n Depth Charge\n\n S.A.C. Alert\n\n\n\n  \n\n\n\n  \n\n\n\n https:// www.ataricompendium.com/archives/reviews/3d_genesis.html\n\n\n\n  \n\n\n\ n 3-D Genesis\n\n\n\n By Daryl Lytle\n\n\n\n  \n\n\n\n I really like this game. It is a bit of a Tempest clone. Set in the future\, the planet is o verrun with huge insects that fight for survival. The enemy has been pushe d into a deep crevice. You are the scorpion like warrior that must battle the oncoming waves of insects and destroy anything that crawls out of the deep void to threaten the planet. The select button will chose a one or tw o player game and fire to start. You control the scorpion like creature mu ch like the 'crawler' in Tempest. You must fire upon any insects trying to crawl out of the void. Moving left or right will maneuver your player aro und the outer edge of the playfield. Enemies will climb up the walls towar ds you. If one reaches the outer rim\, it can knock a section of the outsi de wall away. If you move over that area\, you will fall into the pit! The re is also a creature that's called a 'rail snail' that shows as a yellow section of grid of the outer rim of the void and is constantly moving arou nd the edges that you must contend with. It will kill you if you touch it\ , but for a brief second prior to it changing direction\, it will emit a c ouple tones and you can touch it\, which gives you the ability to either: fill in one of the sections of the grid that the other insects tore away a nd bridge the gap so you can continue along the rail\, or it will give you a one-time immunity from being touched by another one of the insects. Use it however you feel is best. You get three lives per game\, and when you touch another creature\, you fall into the void and lose one life. You wil l also lose a life if you accidentally fall into the void due to the 'rail snail' removing a section of the grid. There are 8 waves to defeat\, and after each wave\, your wave counter will flash letting you know that you c leared that wave. After the 8 waves\, the game continues on\, though your counter never goes higher than 8 waves. The game is a lot of fun\, it's pr etty frantic. The 3D effect is pretty good\, the enemies scale from small to big the closer they get to help give it the needed effect. Good sounds accompany the action. It has decent graphics and great game play. This def initely has a good replay value.\n\n\n\n \n\n\n\n  \n\n\n\n \n\n\n\n  \n \n\n\n https://www.ataricompendium.com/archives/reviews/3d_ghost_attack.ht ml\n\n\n\n 3-D Ghost Attack\n\n\n\n By Daryl Lytle\n\n\n\n  \n\n\n\n This is one of the games that I would have absolutely loved to have been compl eted and released back in the day. This game was going to be a three level game. Thankfully\, all three levels of this game were included in one car t making it a 16k cart for completeness. A nice menu allows you to cycle b etween each level you want to play. You can start on level one and work yo ur way to the third level or play each level individually. The first level you start outside the haunted mansion. There are ghosts moving back and f orth throughout the mansion and you have to shoot them all to move on to l evel two. As you press the fire button\, it will flash where you are shoot ing on the screen so you know where you are aiming. Moving the joystick ei ght ways will move your gun sites around the screen. The second level take s place in the graveyard where once again\, you must shoot all the ‘nast ies’ and then proceed to level three. Level three you are staring into t he portal to the ghost world. You must shoot as many specters as possible before they escape into our world. This pretty much ends your tour of the haunted mansion. Ok 3D effects\, the third level ghosts scale towards you to help the effect. Cool sound effects\, cool graphics\, ok replay value a nd ok game play.\n\n\n\n  \n\n\n\n \n\n\n\n  \n\n\n\n \n\n\n\n  \n\n\n\ n https://www.ataricompendium.com/archives/reviews/3d_havoc.html\n\n\n\n  \n\n\n\n 3-D Havoc\n\n\n\n By Daryl Lytle\n\n\n\n  \n\n\n\n This would have a very promising 3D asteroids type game. Looking out of the ship's fr ont view\, you are to blast as many asteroids as possible. Once you've bla sted approximately a dozen asteroids\, you will start the next level of th e game. This is a first-person perspective scenario that looks like you ar e flying through a tunnel. Once you blast a few more asteroids\, you get a \"HERO\" screen with a bunch of shipmates jumping up and down congratulat ing you on your successful mission. Unfortunately this is where the game p retty much ends. You start the tunnel level. You can shoot\, but you can n ot hit anything. The difficulty switch will cycle your shields either on o r off. The manual states that the gauges at the bottom of the screen unfor tunately do not work. There is a Fuel\, GRed\, and Shield gauge. There als o looks like at the top of the screen some type of scanner that doesn't ap pear to work. It cycles colors as the game continues\, but this may have b een something that just wasn't completed in the game. This could have just been there for special effects. Not sure. The 3D in this game is alright\ , some scaling. Decent sounds and graphics\, game play is ok and has a lit tle replay value.\n\n\n\n  \n\n\n\n \n\n\n\n  \n\n\n\n \n\n\n\n  \n\n\n \n https://www.ataricompendium.com/archives/reviews/atom_smasher.html\n\n\ n\n  \n\n\n\n Atom Smasher\n\n\n\n By Daryl Lytle\n\n\n\n  \n\n\n\n Now this is a unique game.  This is a one or two player game.  You can opt f or: player vs. player\, player vs. computer\, and even computer vs. comput er!  In the Atomic Arena\, you and a partner take on unstable atomic part icles.  The object of the game is to blast these atomic particles out of the arena's moving doors and score points.  If you get touched by one of these\, you start to 'melt'.  You can melt several times before it's ‘A dios Muchachos’.  If you succeed moving the particles out of the arena\ , you move to the next level of the game.  In this arena you will simply struggle to survive.  You can only move vertically along the walls of the arena to avoid contact with the atoms.  Whatever your condition is from the first level will carry on to this level.  This adds a little more cha llenge to this level.  Hang in as long as you can to make it past this le vel.  Left hand players rejoice! At the main screen you have the option o f picking 'right-handed or left-handed player' via the Difficulty switches which is very unique\, I believe a 2600 first.  Said and done\, this is a fun and challenging game.  It has good game play\, good sound and graph ics and a good replay value.\n\n\n\n \n\n\n\n  \n\n\n\n \n\n\n\n  \n\n\n \n https://www.ataricompendium.com/archives/reviews/depth_charge.html\n\n\ n\n  \n\n\n\n Depth Charge\n\n\n\n By Daryl Lytle\n\n\n\n  \n\n\n\n This is a solid sea battle style game. The point of view is through the glass of a periscope. Once again\, the controls are tight\, and handle pretty go od. The Select button will cycle through game variations. You can choose b etween guided or fixed torpedoes and the number of torpedoes you start wit h can be 30\, 60\, or 90. You control the crosshairs of the targeting sigh t. When you press fire\, the crosshairs appear\, when you release the fire button your torpedoes tear through the water towards the enemy. Blow up t he ships and you score points. Some ships are fast\, others are slow. Some will sink with one correctly placed shot and some take multiple shots to destroy. You have a status section at the bottom of the screen that displa ys information showing when you are Ready\, Armed\, Fired and Loading. Hol ding the fire button down will cycle between your score and how many torpe does you have left. Once you are depleted of your torpedoes\, \"00\" will be displayed and you will hear a loud tone. That is when the game comes to an end. At this point even though you can control your crosshairs\, you a re simply waiting for the next cruiser to finish you off. The game will al so end if you are blown out of the water\, displayed by a beautiful explos ion\, and then it's\, \"You sank my battleship!\" Good game play\, sound i s good\, graphics are good and has a decent replay value.\n\n\n\n \n\n\n\n  \n\n\n\n \n\n\n\n  \n\n\n\n https://www.ataricompendium.com/archives/r eviews/sac_alert.html\n\n\n\n  \n\n\n\n S.A.C. Alert\n\n\n\n By Daryl Lyt le\n\n\n\n  \n\n\n\n This is a cool arcade flight combat game. Handles re ally good\, controls are tight. It’s a one player game. Hit select switc h to cycle between land and sea missions. Once you take off\, you take on both ground and air targets. You can see your bullets rip into enemies. Pl anes not only come straight at you\, but also zoom across the screen. Ther e are ground targets you can engage\, tanks\, factories\, ground to air mi ssiles\, ships\, etc. When you see the landing strip on the ground (or in the sea missions\, a carrier) head right for it and you can land to refuel and repair your jet. The next level begins over new territory\, terrain c hanges and ground enemies can fire at you. You have a small HUD that shows Altitude\, Score and Fuel. Warning lights on the left and right side of t he HUD flash and sound off when necessary\, i.e. if you get too low in alt itude and might crash\, or if your fuel gets below 20 units or when your j et takes on too much damage. Enemy hits show on your cockpit glass. If you crash\, the screen turns black and you can replay that mission\, if you h ave remaining jets. When the game ends\, you get ranked\, \"Crew\, Pilot\, Ace\" and rated \"0-9\". Good game play\, sound is above par\, graphics a re solid. Has a good replay value.\n\n\n\n \n\n\n\n  \n\n\n\n \n\n\n\n   \n\n\n\n INTERVIEW WITH LAWSON\n\n\n\n  https://www.vintagecomputing.com/ index.php/archives/545/vcg-interview-jerry-lawson-black-video-game-pioneer \n\n\n\n  \n\n\n\n VC&\;G Interview: Jerry Lawson\, Black Video Game Pioneer\n\nFebruary 24th\, 2009 by Benj Edwards\n\nIn late 2006\, I recei ved a large collection of vintage computer magazines from a friend. For da ys I sat on my office floor and thumbed through nearly every issue\, findi ng page after page of priceless historical information. One day\, while ra pidly flipping through a 1983 issue of Popular Computing\, I encountered a photo that stopped me dead in my tracks.\n\nThere I discovered\, among a story on a new computer business\, a picture of a black man. It might seem crazy\, but after reading through hundreds of issues of dozens of publica tions spanning four decades\, it was the first time I had ever seen a phot ograph of a black professional in a computer magazine. Frankly\, it shocke d me — not because a black man was there\, but because I had never noti ced his absence.\n\nThat discovery sent my mind spinning with questions\, chiefly among them: Why are there so few African-Americans in the electron ics industry? Honestly\, I didn’t know any black engineers or scientists to ask. I tried to track down the man in the magazine\, but all my leads ended up nowhere. I’d have to put the matter aside and wait for another opportunity to address the issue.\n\nFast forward a few months later\, and I’m standing on the showroom floor of Vintage Computer Festival 9.0. A s I spend a few minutes thumbing through a vendor’s large array of cartr idges for sale\, I hear a voice from behind.\n\n“Do you have any Videoso ft cartridges? Color Bar Generator?”\n\nI turn around and notice a larg e black man in a wheelchair\, hair graying at the edges. He seems out of p lace. I scan the crowd — yep\, he’s the only black guy here. Fascina ting — what’s his story? Instead of bumbling through a few impromptu q uestions and making a fool out of myself\, I decide to research his identi ty first.\n\nAs it turns out\, the man I encountered that day was Gerald A. Lawson (aka Jerry)\, co-creator of the world’s first cartridge-based video game system\, the Fairchild Channel F. Naturally\, he was attendin g VCF 9 to give a presentation called\, “The Story of the Fairchild Chan nel F Video Game System.”\n\nJerry Lawson (L) discusses Fairchild Channe l F schematics at VCF 9.0.\n\nBeing one of only two black men (I know of) deeply involved in the industry’s earliest days\, Jerry Lawson is a stan dout figure in video game and computer history. He’s a self-taught elect ronics genius who\, with incredible talents\, audacity\, and strong guidan ce from his parents\, managed to end up at the top of his profession despi te the cultural tides flowing against him.\n\nGrowing up in America\, a la nd of endless diversity\, we tend to fall into certain cultural grooves — well-defined paths of cultural history — that both unite and separat e us. We get comfortable with those grooves and use them as the basis of o ur assumptions about behavior within certain age groups\, socioeconomic cl asses\, and ethnicities. Despite this ingrained cultural momentum\, there are still people who manage to skip those grooves and chart their own cour se\, ignoring any conventions that get in their way. Jerry Lawson is one o f them\, and he’s got an important story to tell.\n\nThis interview took place on February 6th\, 2009 over the telephone.\n\n[Update (04/11/2011):  Jerry Lawson passed away on April 9\, 2011 at the age of 70.]\n\n[Upda te (2015): Read my in-depth account of the creation of the Fairchild Cha nnel F and the invention of the video game cartridge at FastCompany.]\n\n [Update (2017): If you enjoy this interview\, check out my interview wit h Ed Smith\, another early black video game pioneer.]\n\nEarly Life\n\nBen j Edwards: For history’s sake\, when and where were you born?\n\nJerry Lawson: December 1940. I grew up in Queens\, New York City.\n\nBE: How d id you get into electronics?\n\nJL: I started very young. I went to schoo l\, but I was an amateur radio guy when I was thirteen. I was always a sci ence guy since I was a little kid.\n\nBE: Do you have a family history in engineering?\n\nJL: I found out only later in life that my grandfather w as a physicist. Because he was black\, the only place he could work was th e post office. He was a postmaster. He went to some school in the south — I don’t know which one it was.\n\nBE: Did your father do anything l ike that too?\n\nJL: My father was a brilliant man\, but he was a longsho reman. He could work three days a week on the docks and make as much money as most people did in six days. He was a science bug — he used to read everything about science.\n\nBE: He probably encouraged you to do experim enting when you were a kid.\n\nJL: Yeah\, he did. In fact\, some of the t oys I had as a child were quite unusual. Kids in the neighborhood would co me see my toys\, because my dad would spend a lot of time giving me someth ing\, like the Irish Mail. The Irish Mail was a hand car that operated on the ground. It was all metal\, and you could sit on it. You steered it wi th your feet\, and it had a bar in the front\, and the bar with a handle. You’d crank it\, and it would give you forward or backward motivation\, depending on which way you start with it.\n\nI was probably the only kid i n the neighborhood who knew how to operate it\, so I used to leave it out all night sometimes. I’d find it down the block\, but no one would take it\, because they didn’t know how to operate it.\n\nBE: So that must ha ve been in the 1940s then.\n\nJL: It was in the ’40s\, yep. I also had an amateur radio station in the housing project in Jamaica\, New York. Wha t happened was\, I tried to get my license\, and the management wouldn’t sign for it. And it was really hard for me as a kid to research literatur e and the public things I could find\, but I found that it said if you liv ed in a federal housing project\, you didn’t need their permission. Hot diggity! So I got my license\, passed the test\, and I built a station in my room. I had an antenna hanging out the window.\n\nI also made walkie-ta lkies\; I used to sell those. I did a bunch of things as a kid. My first l ove started out as chemistry\, and then I ended up switching over to elect ronics\, and I continued on and even got a first class commercial license — in fact\, I worked a little while in a radio station as chief engineer .\n\nBE: Did you attend college?\n\nJL: Yes\, I did. I went to Queens Co llege\, and I also went to CCNY.\n\nBE: Did you study electronics there?\ n\nJL: Before I had studied electronics\, I had pretty much been into ele ctronics all the way around. When I was 16 or 17 years old\, I used to rep air TVs at different shops I would go to. I did what they called “dealer ship work.” And I used to also fix TVs by making house calls. It was a p lace that had opened up in Jamaica\, New York that was called Lafayette Ra dio. And I used to spend almost every Saturday at Lafayette Radio. Lafayet te Radio was a huge electronics store. They had tube testers\, capacitors\ , resistors — you name it\, they had it. And my mother used to give me a small allowance\, and I’d go down and buy parts.\n\nThere were two othe r electronics stores — one was called Peerless\, and the other was calle d Norman Radio. My budget would say\, well\, I could only afford a capacit or this week\, so I’d buy a capacitor. I could only afford a socket\, an d I’d save my money up for a socket. How ’bout a tube? And I ended up building my transmitter from scratch.\n\nFirst Computer Encounters\n\nBE:  What was the first computer you ever used?\n\nJL: The first computer I ever used was known as the [Forest?] 65L. It was the world’s first milit arized\, solid-state computer. It was designed by ITT\, and I went to a tr aining school for it. Built inside a mountain. They were like the push-but ton war machines you see in the movies. Remember the movie Fail-Safe? That was that machine.\n\nBE: What brought you to see that computer?\n\nJL:  I was working for Federal Electric — ITT. Federal Electric was their div ision of field sales people that went around different parts of the world and did developments and projects. I was hired by them originally to go to Newfoundland to put a radar set back online — to finish the installatio n and adapt the modifications so it could be put online and used. My first love was imagery and radar. Computers were simple stuff.\n\nBE: To fast forward a little bit\, before I get off your history with computers\, do y ou remember the first personal computer you ever used in the 1970s?\n\nJL:  Two of them — that is funny\, because I had an Altair. And before that \, I also had — Fairchild gave me a DEC PDP-8. I put the PDP-8 back int o work. In fact\, the PDP-8 is a story in itself — that ended up running a school in my garage. With the PDP-8\, I had two tape units\, the tape c ontroller\, a high speed tape reader\, and all the maintenance boards and backup spares for it. My garage became a service depot.\n\nDEC said I had the only operating PDP-8 — straight 8 — west of the Mississippi. And t hey asked me if they could run classes in my garage on it. As a result — my PDP-8 had a control unit on it called the TC01. And the TC01 didn’t have all the maintenance updates on it. They said it would cost about ten grand to update it\, and I said\, “Well heck\, I’m not paying ten gr and.” So they said — for them having the class in my garage with the g uys there — they would do the updates for free. They did. The whole upda tes for free.\n\nMy neighbor came over one day\, and the funniest part of it was he walked in\, and — it was not just the computer\, it was the co mputer and all the stuff that went with it. The unit itself was about\, oh \, eight feet by six feet\, and about three feet deep. And it sat in my ga rage\, and I even ran a special power line to it. And he walked in one day and he saw it running\, and it was running what we called the exercise ro utine\, which was a maintenance routine I used to run on it. And he saw th ese tape reels running back and forth\, and lights going on and off\, and he looked at me and he said\, “Is that what I think it is?” I said\, “What do you think it is?” He said\, “Is that a computer?”\n\ n“Yeah.”\n\nAnd he said\, “You got a computer in your garage?” \n\n“Yeah.”\n\n“Did you get one when you bought the house?” [laugh s]\n\nBE: What year was that?\n\nJL: That was ’72\, I think — ’7 0 or ’72\, around in there.\n\nBE: That’s really early for having a c omputer in your garage.\n\nJL: I had an ASR-33 teletype machine too. Th at was the output for it — printer input and output. And my daughter use d to love to come in run this one little thing — she knew how to hook th e speaker next to the data line\, and it played a song. She would go load that in — and she new how to load it — so it would play that song.\n\ nBE: Did you play any games on it?\n\nJL: Lunar Lander. It was all text\ , no graphics.\n\nEarly Electronics Career\n\nBE: Take me through your ea rly electronics career. Besides ITT\, where else did you work before Fairc hild?\n\nJL: I worked for Grumman Aircraft\, Federal Electric\, and PRD E lectronics.\n\nPRD Electronics was the job I went to when I left New York. That was a computerized test facility called [VAS]\, and we used the 1218 UNIVAC Computer. I went to programming school for the 1218\, and we wrote software for it\, and we all wrote a part of it which was a compiler that we called VTRAN.\n\nI used to hate programming. It was a drudgery I reall y hated to do. We had two methods of writing programs: one was what we cal led “ELP\,” an English language program\, then we had to convert it to a thing called VTRAN\, which was our own language we developed.\n\nI work ed for PRD about 4-5 years\, I guess\, and I transferred to a company call ed Kaiser Electronics\, which was out in Palo Alto.\n\nBE: When you were working for Grumman and those places\, was that on the East Coast\, or had you already gone to California?\n\nJL: On the East Coast. When I went to Kaiser\, that was the first time I went west.\n\nBE: What what was Kaise r’s main business?\n\nJL: Kaiser was doing military electronics — par ticularly the displays. They did the head’s up display (HUD) for the A-6 A Grumman aircraft. They also did the VDI\, which was the vertical display indicator. The HUD was a system that shined on the pilot’s canopy so yo u wouldn’t have to watch the turn-bank indicator\, speed\, what have you . The vertical display indicator was something that was on the dash\, whic h was a scope tube\, like a TV image\, that let you see — for instance\, if you had plotted a course\, whether you were turning away from that cou rse\, whether you were on course\, whether you were flying upside down. Li ttle goodies. What the ground texture was. The HUD would just show you ins truments. The VDI would show you the ground return — in other words\, if it was jungle you were flying over\, or mountains.\n\nAfter Kaiser\, I ki cked around the semiconductor industry for a while. I was in between marke ting\, and I was also in engineering applications.\n\nBE: How were the jo b prospects for a black engineer in those days? Did your race affect that in any way?\n\nJL: Oh yeah\, it always did. It could be both a plus and a minus. Where it could be a plus is that\, in some regard\, you got a lot of\, shall we say\, eyes watching you. And as a result\, if you did good\, you did twice as good\, ’cause you got instant notoriety about it.\n\nC onsumer Electronics and Fairchild\n\nBE: Do you think that people in the aerospace industry and military defense had a lot of influence in computer development? Was there any cross-pollination between folks like you who w ent from working on military electronics to consumer products?\n\nJL: Yea h\, because what happened was we got to use technologies that were not\, s hall we say\, consumer-type stuff. But yet\, we were on the leading edge o f pushing the state of the art so that things would become more practical. For example: there was no [DB-9] connector for high volume use in compute rs. The DB-9 connector originally cost an arm and a leg. But when the comp uter and consumer industries came along\, it became plastic\, it became hi gher volume\, and it became a reality to use. Before then\, it was used in military all the time. That was a cross-over kind of a thing.\n\nThe semi conductor content got cheaper and cheaper because of volume. The military components were not that high volume\, but they were very stressful\, they were high-reliability parts. But however\, you take that same part and us e it over and over again in a consumer product — you know\, one of the t hings I used to always say\, I said\, “Military was good training for co nsumer\, because consumer products actually have to be stronger than milit ary.” Everybody said\, “Get out of here!” I said\, “Nah. Just thin k about it for a second.” I said\, “If I did a military product\, I ca n train the individual how to use it. If he decides to tamper\, destroy\, or mal-use it\, I can bring him up to charges\, can’t I? I can insist th at he reads\, that he’s trained in how to turn and turn it off\, right ?” They said\, “Yeah.” “Try that with a consumer.”\n\nBE: Inste ad they hit it with a hammer and dunk it in the toilet\, right?\n\nJL: Ye ah\, I’ll tell you what happened. The first year we put out the Fairchil d video game\, I made the mistake of going to work the day after Christmas . The day after Christmas in the consumer business is called “Hell day .” Why it’s called “Hell day” is because that is when everything c omes back to the store\, and the person couldn’t use it.\n\nSo I start g etting calls — there’s nobody in the factory except the guard and me . I’m there in the plant to take care of some paperwork. He starts trans ferring calls to me. They had one guy call me\, and he wanted to know wher e the batteries go. I said\, “There is no batteries.” He took the thin g apart looking for a battery in there!\n\nOne guy called up and said\, “Dog urine hurt the game.” The dog lifted his leg and peed on it!\n\nA nd one of the things that really cracked me up is that I was starting to g et really jaded by answering the phone\, right? One woman called up\, real ly irate\, and she said\, “My game hums! Do you know why?” And I s aid\, “‘Cause it doesn’t know the words\, lady.”\n\nBE: Good answ er.\n\nJL: And even the guard said\, “All right\, Jerry\, I won’t giv e you any more calls.” I said\, “That’s a good idea.” [laughs]\n\ nBE: That’s a great story. So how did you end up at Fairchild?\n\nJL:  Fairchild was gonna start this brand new thing called freelance engineerin g. They wanted somebody to be able to go around and help customers with de signs. I was available\, and they knew I was an apps guy. They gave me two opportunities. They said\, “You could either go inside in our linear de partment and work there in marketing\, or you can go in the field. If you go in the field\, it’s a brand new deal\; you’re the first guy.” And I said\, “Yeah\, I’ll take that.”\n\nWhen I was there for the first six months\, I said\, “You know\, there’s a problem here. The problem is that Fairchild is not known for being helpful for customers. And I’v e got an image to overcome: how the heck to break down that image they hav e.”\n\nMe and a sales guy got together\, and I wrote a proposal called “Take Fairchild to the Customer.” And the heart of that proposal was a 28-foot van — mobile home. And I wanted to tear it down and put in pro duct demos\, literature — a laboratory on wheels. They went for it. I we nt to a company called Formetrix\, and they built the inside of it\, and i t looked like something from James Bond. It even had a rear-projection scr een that came out of the ceiling. It turned out to be an overwhelming succ ess\, so they came back to me and said\, “We want you to do it again.” \n\nSo I went to FMC\, and they had a brand new coach they built. The rear -end was the Bradley differential for a tank. It had a 485 cubic inch engi ne\, a 50-gallon gas tank\, four air condition units\, and it drove like a car. The wheels were in tandem\, next to each other. That thing was somet hin’ else.\n\nOne time\, my daughter wanted to ride in it. I said\, “O h\, ok.” So I got her in it. The guys at FMC said they had just tried ou t a brand new cruise control for it. I said\, “Oh that’s nice.” They said\, “Let us know how you like it.”\n\nI got out on the highway and pushed the cruise control\; it took over. I went to disengage\, and it wo uldn’t disengage. And I went\, “Oh my god.” I slammed on the brakes\ , and it was riding the brakes. I came around\, and there was a truck and some cars parked at a light\, and I was trying to figure out which one of these vehicles I’m going to rear end\, right? Just then\, I reached down and pulled all the wiring out. It cut the engine off.\n\nI brought it bac k in a slow walk and said\, “You clowns.” And I told them what happene d and they said\, “Oh my God\, it didn’t disengage?” I said\, “N o.”\n\nThere at the Beginning — Atari and Apple\n\nBE: What year did you start working at Fairchild?\n\nJL: 1970\, I think.\n\nBE: What were Fairchild’s main products at the time?\n\nJL: Oh\, they had everything: memories\, linear devices. They had LED devices. They were a full-line se miconductor place. They even had a microprocessor they brought out called the F8\, which is the one I incorporated into the game. Two kinds of games : I made a game in my garage called Demolition Derby in oh\, ’73? ’7 2?\n\nBE: When you did that\, had you seen Pong or any other games?\n\n JL: When they started to work on Pong\, there was a gentleman — I went in to see him one time\, and he worked at a company called “Syzygy.” The guy’s name was Alan Alcorn. The name of the two other guys were Nol an Bushnell and Ted Dabney. It was the beginning of Atari.\n\nBE: Did yo u know those guys?\n\nJL: Yep\, very well.\n\nBE: Did you help them with any projects?\n\nJL: Not really — I tried to sell Alan a character gen erator. He showed me the way he was doing it\, which was much simpler\, an d I said\, “Heck\, there’s no sense using a character generator.” ‘Cause what he did was he decoded segments to make block lettering\, num bering for score keeping [in Pong]. He really didn’t have need for anyt hing else that was character oriented.\n\nThe first Pong machine was put into a beer joint. And Alan told me the first week that thing was in\, co ins were flopping out on the floor. The game I did using the F8 microproce ssor was put into a pizza parlor down in a place called Campbell\, Califor nia. And one of the features that it had was a coin jiggle function.\n\nOn e of the things the [Atari] guys were telling me was that kids were coming in with piezoelectric shockers and shocking the machine to give them free games. Or they would take in a wire and jiggle it down in the coin slot. So he said he would love to have a way where that wouldn’t happen anymor e.\n\nWhat we did was take coins — it goes through the coin device and i t hits a microswitch. It stays on the microswitch for a certain period of time before it drops down\, right? We’d time that point of time that it would go through the microswitch\, so the microprocessor on board would kn ow whether it was a coin or somebody jiggling the switch. That was the way we had a coin defeat for it.\n\nBE: Was that for your Demolition Derby? \n\nJL: Yeah\, that was for mine.\n\nBE: When was the first time you saw a video game? Was it Pong\, or…\n\nJL: No\, it was Nolan’s game ca lled Computer Space. It looked like a big phone. And there was some talk about a game that was kept at the student union at Stanford — I never di d see that one\, though. It used a computer and some graphics functions — way too expensive to be in a consumer product.\n\nBE: It’s really i nteresting that you were there at the birth of arcade games.\n\nJL: I was also there when two gentlemen showed up — we used to have a computer cl ub [The Homebrew Computer Club –ed.] that was in the Stanford Linear Accelerator auditorium once a month. And the two guys that used to come t here all the time with their little toys — one guy was named Steve Jobs\ , and the other guy was named Steve Wozniak. There during the beginning.\ n\nBE: Did you attend any of those computer club meetings?\n\nJL: Yes\, I went to most of them.\n\nBE: Did you talk to Steve Jobs and Wozniak bac k then?\n\nJL: I was not impressed with them — either one\, in fact. Wh at happened was that when I had the video game division [at Fairchild]\, a nd I was the chief engineer\, I interviewed Steve Wozniak for a job to wor k for us. Well\, my guys were kind of impressed with him at first\, and I said I wasn’t. Never had been.\n\n[Update (2021): In a 2017 interview o n my Culture of Tech podcast\, Steve Wozniak denied that he ever applied to work at Fairchild and has no memory of ever meeting Lawson or seeing h im at the Homebrew Computer Club. This doesn’t mean it didn’t happen\, but Wozniak doesn’t remember it.]\n\nBE: Were you the only black guy a t those computer club meetings?\n\nJL: Yes.\n\nBE: Did you know any othe r black people in that field at the time?\n\nJL: There was a guy who was around that time\, and he’s dead now. His name was Ron Jones. He ended u p pushing all kinds of side things. He was around. He was not in the indus try\, per se.\n\nBE: So you said you weren’t impressed with Wozniak at the time. What was your impression of Jobs and Wozniak back then?\n\nJL:  Jobs was kind of a sparkplug. He was more business — he was more “push -this\, push-that” kind of a thing. I think that his motivation is still there\, the same way. He’s the sparkplug of Apple\, right? Wozniak neve r was. But the guy who was the real hero that never gets mentioned is a gu y named Mike Markkula. Mike Markkula was a multi-millionaire. In fact\, he was one of the original founders of Intel. He also built Incline Villag e in Tahoe\, and he ran Apple for a while.\n\nBE: Mike gave them their f irst investment — their first seed money\, right?\n\nJL: Yes\, he did. He is filthy rich\, but a good guy. Really good guy.\n\nBE: What position were you interviewing Steve Wozniak for at Fairchild?\n\nJL: Just as an engineer. We had a bunch of engineers that were already there.\n\nBE: Wha t year was that?\n\nJL: It was about the same time\, ’73 or ’74.\n\n BE: So he just didn’t get the job or you picked somebody else? Is that what happened?\n\nJL: He was going to go away to — [his HP division] wa s moving to Corvallis [Oregon]. He was working for HP\, and he was looking for a job to get away from HP. That was before they even started Apple up . Before they were on their own.\n\nVideo Games at Fairchild\n\nBE: Lets get back to your career at Fairchild. How did the whole video game thing a t Fairchild get started?\n\nJL: I did my home coin-op game first in my ga rage. Fairchild found out about it — in fact\, it was a big controversy that I had done that. And then\, very quietly\, they asked me if I wanted to do it for them. Then they told me that they had this contracted with th is company called Alpex\, and they wanted me to work with the Alpex people \, because they had done a game which used the Intel 8080. They wanted to switch it over to the F8\, so I had to go work with these two other engine ering guys and switch the software to how the F8 worked. So\, I had a secr et assignment\; even the boss that I worked for wasn’t to know what I wa s doing.\n\nI was directly reporting to a vice president at Fairchild\, wi th a budget. I just got on an airplane when I wanted to go to Connecticut and talk to these people\, and I wouldn’t have to report to my boss. And this went on\, and finally\, we decided\, “Hey\, the prototype looks li ke it’s going to be worth something. Let’s go do something.” I had t o bring it from this proof of performance to reality — something that yo u could manufacture. Also\, a division had to be made\, so I was working w ith a marketing guy named Gene Landrum\, and sat down and wrote a business plan for building video games.\n\nI was the number one employee. My set t ask was to work on the prototype and hire a bunch of people to work with m e\, most of which came from Fairchild. In fact\, the big man asked me\, “Where did these people come from?” And I said\, “They were working here all the time.” He said\, “They were?” I said\, “Mmm hmm. All they needed was a reason to do something.” I just went out and talked to them.\n\nSo\, it was an interesting thing\, because the memory we used — 4K RAMS\, dynamic RAMs — I would use four of them per system. Now\, in making the pricing up\, I used to go to MOS (even though Fairchild also made these things)\, and they were throwing out the ones that weren’t p assing their tests. And I would go up there — literally with a little re d wagon and two cardboard boxes — and I would load them up with RAMs: th ey’re throw outs\, they’re garbage. And I’d take them to an outside test lab\, and I got 90% yield out of their garbage can.\n\nSo I was sitti ng there going\, “Great\, it’s for free!” [MOS] heard I was doing it for free\, so they got in there and decided\, “Uh uh\, you’re going t o pay for them!” I said\, “You dirty rats.”\n\nSo the vice president I was working for\, Greg\, gets involved and said “I’ll take care of the negotiations over this.” He got in there and did a great negotiator job of two dollars per unit that we had to pay.\n\nWell\, one day I got ti red of taking my engineers off their work to prove that the parts MOS were delivering were garbage\, or no good. I was getting really pissed at them . Finally\, one day they couldn’t deliver anything. So I asked for permi ssion to go to Intel\, who made the part too. One day\, I walked into the vice presidents office and I said\, “Want to see something?” He said \, “What?” “Look at this. You are paying two dollars a piece for gar bage that we can’t get. I can get them from Intel for a dollar ten.”\n \nHe said\, “What?”\n\n“Uh huh\, you’re being taken.”\n\nBE: An d he was the one who did the negotiating\, right?\n\nJL: Yeah\, right. I kept trying to tell him when I was in the ranks\, “You know\, our pricin g is way too high. That’s one of the reasons why we get our lunch taken out. You don’t know how to make product cheap enough.”\n\nThe First Ca rtridge System\n\nBE: When you started that video game prototype at Fairc hild\, was it always intended to be a home product\, like a video game con sole for a TV set?\n\nJL: It was always intended to be a home game.\n\nBE : Had you seen the Magnavox Odyssey?\n\nJL: Yep.\n\nBE: And you perhaps wanted to do a product like that?\n\nJL: Nope.\n\nThe Odyssey was a joke \, as far as I’m concerned. It was the plug board thing — it had no in telligence. And it had overlays\, remember? They put things the screen to play different games. What was paramount to our system was to have cartrid ges. There was a mechanism that allowed you to put the cartridges in witho ut destroying the semiconductors. The mechanical guys that worked on that did a very good job.\n\nBE: So that was a big issue at the time: plugging and unplugging a cartridge might…\n\nJL: …cause an explosion on the semiconductor device — break down static charge\, that kind of thing. We were afraid — we didn’t have statistics on multiple insertion and wha t it would do\, and how we would do it\, because it wasn’t done. I mean\ , think about it: nobody had the capability of plugging in memory devices in mass quantity like in a consumer product. Nobody.\n\nBE: It was comple tely new then\, wasn’t it?\n\nJL: Yeah. We had no idea what was going t o happen. And then we also had to stop putting [the chips] in packages. We had to put them on little boards where we’d put the chip down and we’ d bond the chip to the board\, then put a glob top on it. The package was a waste.\n\nBE: Whose idea was it to do the cartridge in the first place? \n\nJL: I always had that idea. We had a lot of people that did.\n\n[Edit or’s Note – 2/21/2015 – We now know that the initial idea for a vid eo game cartridge actually came from two men\, Wallace Kirschner and Lawr ence Haskel\, who worked for Alpex Computer Corporation and licensed the t echnology to Fairchild.\n\nAfter Fairchild licensed Alpex’s technology\, a team that included Ron Smith\, Nick Talesfore\, and Jerry Lawson refin ed the technology and turned it into a practical\, commercial product.\n\n So the credit for the first cartridge should technically be shared among t hese five men — and not by Lawson alone\, as many have misinterpreted si nce I published this interview in 2009.]\n\nBE: It seems that — from wh at I know\, RCA released a system that had cartridges around the same time as the Channel F.\n\nJL: RCA was behind us. In fact\, it was a piece of junk. I’ll tell you a funny story about RCA. We introduced our game\, an d RCA followed six months later in the Winter CES show. At that show in Ch icago\, RCA presented their Studio II. I had an invitation that said\, “ Hey\, the RCA game is here.” Well\, I wanted to see that. It was being s hown in a suite. And I went up to the suite and walked in. They had their game there\, and this guy looks up and sees me with a Fairchild badge on\, right? And I’m 6’6″\, 280 pounds. This clown charged me and tried t o wrestle me to the ground. And I banged him on his head! I said\, “If y ou want me to leave\, I’ll leave!”\n\nAnd what I saw was a laugh. They had this game — it was in black and white. It looked horrible. So\, the next day\, he came down to our booth. And when he came down to our booth\ , I jumped the counter\, heading for him. And he started running! [laughs] I said\, “Ah\, there he goes.”\n\nBE: You said that Channel F had al ready been released\, right?\n\nJL: Oh yeah. Well\, the biggest part of g etting the Channel F released was getting through the FCC. That was a job in itself. It was the first microprocessor device of any nature to go thro ugh FCC testing. And I — believe me\, I got some gray hairs over that. T he FCC was really hard on us. And Al Alcorn came down — it was funny whe n they first saw it — Al\, Nolan\, and the [Atari] president then — at the Chicago show. They came down to me and said\, “Lawson! It’s cool\ , except the only thing we dig is the hand controllers.” And Al told me\ , he said\, “Oh\, boy\, that little noise you’ve got there on the scre en\, boy\, you’re really going to have to get rid of that — you’re g onna have trouble with the FCC.”\n\nAnd I had to leave the show early to go to the FCC. Because the FCC — oh boy — it cost\, at that point\, a thousand dollars\, and the spec they had was one microvolt per meter of s purious signals you couldn’t overcome. And if you had any more than that \, you were in trouble.\n\nThe problem was — Texas Instruments\, years l ater\, couldn’t make that spec. So guess what they did? They lobbied and got them to change the law. I was so mad\, I couldn’t see straight. ‘ Cause that was what keeping a lot of people from jumping in the market\, i ncluding RCA. They couldn’t pass the test.\n\nWe had to put the whole mo therboard in aluminum. We had to make an aluminum case for it\, we had to have bypasses on every lead going in and out of the thing. It was unreal\, some of the stuff we had to do. We had a metal chute that went over the c artridge adapter to keep radiation in. Each time we made a cartridge\, the FCC wanted to see it\, and it had to be tested.\n\nBE: Wow. Every single cartridge?\n\nJL: Every single cartridge.\n\nBE: By ’77\, when the At ari VCS was released\, do you think they had to get their cartridges teste d\, or was that out the window?\n\nJL: I’m sure they had to.\n\nBE: Wh at did you think about the Atari VCS when it came out?\n\nJL: The VCS had some good features in it\, but by and large\, as far as for graphical dis play\, it was substandard. They had ways of doing things with — you use things known as sprite technology. They could make high resolution charact ers\, but they couldn’t put a bunch of stuff on the screen at the same t ime. So\, as a result — one of the games they tried to compete with us\, and they did a very bad job\, was Blackjack. Blackjack looked horrible .\n\nOf course\, they did things that tried to offset that. You can’t bl ame them for that\, right? And their first game had a beautiful sky and ob jects running across it. It looked very cool. But it really wasn’t anyth ing. But it was the best graphic looks that the game [could do]. Ours look ed like little players\, and things\, you know.\n\nBE: How much total RAM did the Channel F have in it?\n\nJL: 16K [kilobits]\n\n[Editor’s Note: As it turns out\, the Channel F had 64 bytes of main RAM and 16 kilobits (or 2 kilobytes of video RAM). During the interview\, I misunderstood that Lawson was speaking of kilobits and not kilobytes.]\n\nBE: Really? 16K? That was a lot at the time. I think the VCS had 128 bytes of RAM.\n\nJL : See\, our memory was used as a screen. The screen was memory. What you were doing when you played our game\, you were actually putting symbology in a memory\, and that memory was being displayed on screen. What you look ed at when you were looking at the screen was an array of memory so-many-b its high by so-many-bits deep. In fact\, when we had to move a character a round\, we had a thing we called “self-erasing characters.” Now what w e would do is black out a square — say eight by eight — and around tha t eight by eight would be a border or background\, and the symbology was p ut inside of it. So every time it moved\, it would automatically erase the previous position. If we hadn’t done it that way — like we tried to f ill it in — each time we moved it\, we’d have to erase the last positi on it was in. If we did it that way\, we ended up having objects that look like they’re jumping around and flashing.\n\nA lot of little things we used to do were different. Our hand controllers were special. They were an alog equivalent\, but they were digital. And somebody asked how we did tha t. Well\, we would drive the objects. In other words\, when the [switch] c losed in a direction\, we would send the object in that direction. We’d send it fast\, then we’d slow it down\, so that it would have a kind of a hysteresis curve. We needed to do that for the human factors of using th e hand controllers.\n\nThe hand controllers had a lot of — nobody has du plicated one yet. They’ve used them in other things. The hand controller had eight positions: up\, down\, left\, right\, forward and backward left and right. Eight positions.\n\nBE: Do you know the history of Atari’s joystick and how it compared to the Fairchild hand controller? Who made th e first home console joystick? Was it Fairchild?\n\nJL: Yep. Ours was dig ital. Digital meaning there was no fixed position. If you had a regular ha nd controller that is run with resistors or pots\, you move the hand contr oller and leave it alone\, that object would say\, “OK\, I’m staying i n that position.” Ours would not. In other words\, every time you’d mo ve it\, and let go\, it would stay where it is However\, the hand controll er would be back in neutral position again. So you had to get used to that operation\, knowing how to operate it.\n\nBE: Who designed the controlle r for the Channel F?\n\nJL: I designed the prototype. The original contro ller was designed by a guy named Ron Smith. Mechanical guy. The case of th e controller was designed by a guy named Nicholas Talesfore\, an industria l designer.\n\nBE: What was your official title or position when you were working on the Channel F?\n\nJL: I was director of engineering and marke ting for Fairchild’s video game division. I was in charge of all the new cartridges\, how they were made\, and what the games were.\n\nBE: What w as the atmosphere of your office like at Fairchild when you were developin g the Channel F?\n\nJL: Well\, I was always considered to be a renegade. I mean\, I had many people from Fairchild’s operation up in Mountain Vie w come down and tell me how to operate a business. I’d send ’em home w ith their tails wagging.\n\nOne of the things I told them\, very simply\, was that some of the biggest problems any company has in development is ha ving all these tin gods that come down and tell you how to do things. And one of the reasons they can never develop anything is because of these tin gods. It’s not enough to say\, “Here’s a business. Run this busin ess.” You have all these people telling you what you should do and how y ou should do it.\n\nIBM was smart enough that when they developed the PC\, they put a whole group in Boca Raton and left them alone. If they hadn’ t\, they wouldn’t ever had a PC. It would have come out looking like a m achine that needed to be in somebody’s office\, not somebody’s home.\n \nBE: Did you have any contact with Ralph Baer or Magnavox in the ’70 s?\n\nJL: I met Ralph Baer maybe 6-7 years ago — maybe more than that — at the Classic Gaming Expo. I met him there on a panel. In fact\, wha t they did is that I was a big secret a lot of times\, because people didn ’t know who I was. And what happened was they had me come there introduc ed by this Japanese guy that was with the group\, and he said\, “You guy s want to meet the person who started the cartridge business? Jerry\, stan d up.” And I stood up and joined them on the dais.\n\nIn fact\, there’ s one cartridge that’s really funny. The guy paid — we did a cartridge when I had my own company called Videosoft. It was a 2600 cartridge — i t was a color bar generator.\n\nBE: Like a TV test pattern kind of thing? \n\nJL: Yep. At the vintage show in San Jose\, a guy comes up to me and h e says\, “Hey! You’re Videosoft\, aren’t ya? You got any more of tho se Color Bar cartridges?” I said\, “Nah\, I haven’t got one.” He f ound one at the show\, and he came up to me and said\, “Autograph this f or me?” I said\, “Yeah\, sure.” He got a silver ink pen\, and I auto graphed it. The next day\, I was giving a talk from the dais\, and another guy said\, “Hey\, did you autograph a cartridge yesterday?” I said\ , “Yeah. Why\, did you buy it?” He said\, “Yeah. Since it’s got yo ur autograph on it\, I paid $500 for it.” Holy Jesus\, right? My wife wa s sitting there going\, “You got any more of those?” [laughs]\n\nBE:  Yeah\, that would be a good business to get into.\n\nImpact of Race on Pro fession\n\nBE: Did you experience any difficulties in your career because of your race?\n\nJL: Oh yeah. There’s two ways I used to experience it . First of all\, I’m a big guy. So not too many people confronted me fac e to face. But I’ve had instances where I’ve walked into places where they didn’t know I was black.\n\nI’ll give you an example. Not that th e guy was a racist\, but a guy named John Ellis\, who was one of the Atari people. In about\, oh\, 1996 or 7\, a law firm in Texas hired me as a con sultant. And they were going to sue Nintendo. And they told me they want t o bring John Ellis in too\, ’cause he’s from Atari\, and I go\, “Oh\ , fine.” They said\, “You know John Ellis?” I said\, “I know Joh n — very well.”\n\nSo the next day\, John comes in the room\, sees me\ , and says\, “Hi Jerry.” And he looked kind of strange. I said\, “ What’s the matter with you\, John?” He said\, “I’ve always known y ou as Jerry Lawson. I didn’t know you were the same video game guy Jerry Lawson — I didn’t know you were black!” And I said\, “Huh?” H e said\, “Al Alcorn\, Nolan Bushnell\, talked about you — all of them talked about you — Joe Keenan. But they never said you were black.” I said\, “Well\, I am.” He said\, “I don’t know whether they did you a favor or not.” I said\, “Well I don’t go around telling everybo dy I’m black.” I just do my job\, you know?\n\nWith some people\, it ’s become an issue. I’ve had people look at me with total shock. Parti cularly if they hear my voice\, because they think that all black people h ave a voice that sounds a certain way\, and they know it. And I sit there and go\, “Oh yeah? Well\, sorry\, I don’t.”\n\nBE: Why do you thi nk there’s so few black people working in engineering?\n\nJL: I think w hat has happened is that engineering is a thing that has never really appe aled to black people directly\, because they’ve never had…\n\nYou see\ , I grew up in a different environment. My mother — she invented busing . When she went to a school\, she would interview the teachers\, the princ ipal\, and if they didn’t pass her test\, I didn’t go to that school. She once put me in a school called P.S. 50. Turns out Mario Cuomo went to that school. He was a little older than me\, and I didn’t know him at th e school\, but he went to the same school. My mother — now get this no w — the school was 99% white. My mother was the president of the PTA.\n\ nWe didn’t even live in the neighborhood. I had a phony address\, I used to go halfway cross town to go to school and to go home. I went up ’til the 6th grade\, then I went to a junior high school that turned out to be really bad. I was in there for six months\, and my mother came to school one day. She talked to the principal\, talked to the teacher\, and walked in the classroom. She nodded toward me\, and I go\, “Oh well\, that’ s it.” And I wasn’t going to stay in that school. So I went to another school.\n\nBut one of the things she had long since said was that the bla ck kids were put under an aroma of “you can’t do something.” It was something that she felt would not help them with any kind of inspiration t o go anywhere. When I was in P.S. 50\, I had a teacher in the first grade — and I’ll never forget that — her name was Ms. Guble. I had a pict ure of George Washington Carver on the wall next to my desk. And she sai d\, “This could be you.” I mean\, I can still remember that picture\, still remember where it was.\n\nNow\, the point I’m getting at is\, this kind of influence is what led me to feel\, “I want to be a scientist. I want to be something.” Now\, I went to another black school and talked to kids who were in the neighborhood\, and they did nothing like this. The y never went out anywhere\, they never knew anything. The kids I worked wi th\, and went around with\, and played with — they did different things\ , right? They were looking through microscopes. They’d go outside in a f ield — do something\, right? These would not do that. All they did was p lay baseball or football.\n\nSo I think my mother had a lot to do with it. She was very effective at the board of education\, because she would tell them off. She’d tell ’em\, “Look. My school needs this\, and th at’s it.” She’d long since found that the squeaky wheel gets all the oil. She was president of the PTA for about four years.\n\nBE: And that was in the 1950s?\n\nJL: The ’50s\, yeah. So anyhow\, my mother was ver y key to that. In fact\, she died a very young age. It was the part of the eulogy I gave her about some of the things she had accomplished.\n\nI rem ember as a kid\, I wanted to get an atomic energy kit. Gilbert Hall of Sci ence made one. It had a Geiger counter and a Wilson cloud chamber. A hundr ed bucks. My mother tried to get it for me for Christmas\, but finally sat down and told me\, “I can’t do it.” I understood. But she got me a radio receiver\, a [Hallicrafters] S-38. That’s what got me into amateur radio. From then on\, I built converters\, antennas\, everything else. Th at is the heart of what I started out with.\n\nI ran into one black man wh o did help me\, and his name was Cy Mays. Cy worked as a motorman in the s ubway system in New York. He was a buddy of one of the guys who ran Norman Radio. And I used to come in to Norman Radio and — I used to have a red baseball cap — and they said\, “Red Cap’s here!” And he came out and saw me and said\, “Why you getting all this stuff?” I said\, “I just got my license.”\n\n“You just got your ham license?”\n\n“ Yeah.”\n\n“Have you got a car or some kind of conveyance\, or someth ing?”\n\nI said\, “Yeah\, my dad does.”\n\nHe said\, “Ok\, here’ s my address. Come around this Sunday.”\n\nHe had more stuff in his gara ge and his basement…it was like going through a goodie land. “Take wha tever you need.”\n\nBE: What advice would you give to young black men o r women who might be considering a career in science or engineering?\n\nJL : First of all\, to get them to consider it 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\, becau se 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 every one else’s way to tell you which way to go\, and how to go\, and what yo u should be doing.\n\nYou’ll find some people out there that will help y ou. And they’re not always black\, of course. They’re white. ‘Cause when you start to get involved in certain practices and certain things you want to do\, you’re colorless.\n\nIn fact\, one of the funny stories ab out is that for years\, people heard me on the radio\, and didn’t know I was black. In fact\, Hal — a good friend of mine who just passed way — took me to what is called a “bunny hunt.” A bunny hunt is where a guy has a hidden transmitter\, and you try to locate where he is. The peop le trying to find him all go to a diner and talk to each other\; they call it “having an eyeball.” Well\, I went with Hal one time\, and a bunch of guys all over the diner came down to see him. One of them says\, “He y Hal\, how ya doing?” And Hal says\, “Oh\, fine.” And he said\, “ How are you\, sir?” And I said\, “I’m fine.” And he said\, “What did you say?”\n\n“I said ‘I’m fine.'”\n\nAnd he goes\, “Jerry ? K2SPG Jerry?” He went running down the end of the bar and came back wi th everybody. And they all went\, “You’re Jerry?” I was like\, “Ye ah. And this one girl\, she said\, “Oh God\, I had a picture of you — I was in love with your voice.”\n\n“Oh\, you were?”\n\n“And I had a picture of you\, and you were about 5’7″\, blond hair and blue eye s.”\n\n“God\, you’re way off on that\, aren’t you?” [laughs]\n\ nBE: So I guess you have to be brave in some ways to be a black scientist . It seems like it would go against the tide of culture.\n\nJL: The point of anything by yourself is that you have to be brave to go by yourself\, don’t you? You’re not going to get reinforcement from peers\, right? E xcept for the new peers you find as a result of going through this.\n\nI m ean\, normally\, the guys on the corner that go play basketball are not go nna be your buddies in that. And that’s how they mark things too. It’s unfortunate that they all think they’re gonna be members of the NBA. I try to tell them\, “be.”\n\nBE: How many kids do you have?\n\nJL: Tw o: a son and a daughter.\n\nBE: Did any of them follow you into engineeri ng or something similar?\n\nJL: One is now following me\, and that’s in teresting. He went through Morehouse in Atlanta and graduated as a program mer. Computer science. Just recently\, he decided to go back\, because he wanted to do electronics. He’s taking his master’s and he’s becoming an A-student at Georgia Tech. And he calls me — he does microprocessor work now and all these things that really appeal to him\, and he says\, “You know\, pop? I like this stuff\, and my wife calls me Little Jerry .”\n\nMy daughter — she was an athlete that kinda blew it. ‘Cause wh at happened\, is when she was ready to go to the Olympics\, she got all fo uled up. The girl that she was racing against ended up in the Olympics — but she beat ’em all. She has three track &\; field records at the h igh school she went to\; they still stand.\n\nBE: How do you feel about O bama as President?\n\nJL: Let me put it this way: Obama was the best qual ified guy\, period\, of any color. Obama was put in that office position n ot because he’s black\, but because he’s the best qualified\, and a lo t of white people put him there. If it wasn’t for the white people\, he wouldn’t have been there\, because the black people can’t put you in t hat office. If anybody thinks that because he’s black\, he’s going to turn around and make everything black\, he’s not. It’s not his way. An d his heritage is half-white anyhow\, right? So it’s not even that — e ven if he was an all-black man\, he still wouldn’t do that.\n\nObama is needed because\, all of a sudden — I think — it’s amazing how much p eople have changed their attitude about what’s going on in this world. I’m hoping that he can straighten out a lot of things with his attitude . Because one of the things that the government does\, or the man at the t op does\, is to set the tone of what’s gonna happen.\n\nLawson Today\n\n BE: What are you up to these days?\n\nJL: Well\, I used to work with Sta nford in the mentor program\, working with kids to put two satellites in s pace already. Other than that\, I do laser work\, and I’m getting ready to write my book.\n\nBE: Have you played any video games since the 1970s? Have you kept up with video games?\n\nJL: I don’t play video games tha t often\; I really don’t. First of all\, most of the games that are out now — I’m appalled by them. They’re all scenario games considered wi th shooting somebody and killing somebody. To me\, a game should be someth ing like a skill you should develop — if you play this game\, you walk a way with something of value. That’s what a game is to me.\n\nIf I was to say intelligence was a weight and say\, “Let’s take intelligence\, we igh it in pounds\, and say it’s a hundred pounds.” The way we measure intelligence today is if I have a hundred pounds of intelligence and I get from you 99 pounds\, you’re considered bright\, right? My feeling is wh at “bright” is or what “genius” is — if I give you a hundred pou nds of intelligence\, you give me back 120. That means you take what you ’ve taken and gone beyond that. You’ve learned other things\, correlat ed the pieces\, and put it together and added something to it. That’s ge nius.\n\nAnd what’s wrong many times today is that we don’t have any b asis for teaching that correctly. See\, we’re taking away from childre n’s imaginations. Video games today — they don’t even want to see an ything unless the graphics are completely high-toned\, right? It used to b e\, “Oh\, well that looks like a car.” Well\, looks like one\, you kno w? No\, they want to see a car\, they want to see wheel spinners on it\, a nd all the detail — infinite detail.\n\nBE: How has being a designer on the Fairchild Channel F changed your life?\n\nJL: It made me go into bus iness for myself — I can tell you that. Videosoft I had for a couple yea rs\, I started that. We did cartridges for the 2600 and for Milton Bradley .\n\nAlso\, I remember one time I was in Las Vegas\, walking down the stri p. A black kid came up to me and said\, “Are you Jerry Lawson?” I sa id\, “Yeah.” He said\, “Thanks.” And shook my hand and walked on p ast me. And I thought I may have inspired him.\n\nMy son actually nominate d me as a fellow at the Computer Museum. Whether or not it goes anywhere\ , I don’t know. But I feel that I’ve got to get that done. I’m writi ng my story because I think that when kids go there — black kids — and they see somebody black\, it will make a big difference on them.\n\n—\ n[ Update: 2/21/2015 – For more on the creation of the Channel F\, r ead “The Untold Story of the Invention of the Game Cartridge” by Benj Edwards at FastCompany.com. ]\n\n\n\n\n  \n\n\n\n VIDEOSOFT GAME LISTING\ n\n\n\n https://gdri.smspower.org/wiki/index.php/Video_Soft\n\n\n\n  \n\n \n\n Video Soft (incorporated on May 7\, 1982\, as Video-Soft\, Inc.) was based in Santa Clara\, California\, and founded and headed by Jerry Lawso n [1]\, previously the chief engineer behind the Fairchild Channel F syst em. The company made games for Amiga\, CBS\, Mattel\, Milton Bradley\, and Parker Brothers. [2]\n\n\n\n Research Methods: Online resources\n\n\n\n 2600\n\n\n\n 3-D Genesis (unreleased) (Amiga) [Dan McElroy\, Jerry Lawso n]\n\n\n\n 3-D Ghost Attack (unreleased) (Amiga) [Mike Glass\, Jerry Laws on]\n\n\n\n 3-D Havoc (unreleased) (Amiga) [Frank Ellis\, Jerry Lawson]\n \n\n\n Atom Smasher (unreleased) (Video Soft)\n\n\n\n Color Bar Generator Cart (US Publisher: Video Soft) [Dan McElroy\, Jerry Lawson]\n\n\n\n Dep th Charge (unreleased) (Amiga) [Jerry Lawson]\n\n\n\n Golf Diagnostic [D an McElroy\, Jerry Lawson]\n\n\n\n For use with an interactive golf simula tor\n\n\n\n In Search of the Golden Skull (unreleased) (Mattel) [Jerry La wson] [3]\n\n\n\n Mogul Maniac (US Publisher: Amiga)\n\n\n\n Off Your Ro cker (unreleased) (Amiga) [Frank Ellis]\n\n\n\n S.A.C. Alert (unreleased ) (Amiga) [Jerry Lawson]\n\n\n\n Scavenger Hunt (unreleased) (Amiga) [Mik e Glass]\n\n\n\n Spitfire Attack (US/CA Publisher: Milton Bradley) [Frank Ellis] [4]\n\n\n\n Strafe (unreleased) (Amiga)\n\n\n\n Surf's Up (unre leased) (Amiga) [Chip Curry]\n\n\n\n Atari 8-bit\n\n\n\n Mogul Maniac (US Publisher: Romox)\n\n\n\n  \n\n\n\n secondary listing\n\n https://www.di gitpress.com/video-game-guide/?title=&\;dollars_loose=&\;dollars_com plete=&\;scarcity_loose=&\;scarcity_complete=&\;Designer=&\;De veloper=Video+Soft&\;Mfr=&\;PartNo=&\;Released=&\;mode=Search\ n\n\n\n \n\n\n\n \n\n\n\n \n\n DTSTART;VALUE=DATE:20251201 RRULE:FREQ=YEARLY;INTERVAL=1 END:VEVENT END:VCALENDAR