The Fairchild Channel F

Steve Wozniak, who would go on to found Apple with Steve Jobs, applied for an engineering job in Lawson’s gaming division at Fairchild while they were working on the Channel F. Lawson already knew Wozniak and Jobs because they were all members of the Homebrew Computer Club, which met biweekly from 1975 to 1986. Lawson would later tell VCG that he wasn’t very impressed with either Jobs or Wozniak when he knew them in the 1970s. He thought Jobs was OK as a business guy (which may have been a case of damning with faint praise in a club made up of hardware and software engineers). Wozniak didn’t impress enough to get the job.

Under Lawson’s leadership, Fairchild released the Fairchild Channel F in November 1976. It was a game changer. Lawson engineered the console using the same F8 microprocessor he had used for Demolition Derby . The Channel F was the first gaming console with its own microprocessor. The F8 gave the system enough computing power to implement AI subroutines, which made the Channel F the first console system that allowed players to play against the computer. Before that, video games required a human opponent.

"He's absolutely a pioneer," said Al Alcorn, the Atari co-founder and Pong developer who competed with Lawson, when talking about his peer to the Mercury News. "When you do something for the first time, there is nothing to copy."

The Channel F was also revolutionary because it was the first console system that could play programmable game cartridges. Before the Channel F, consoles could only play games that were coded on the system when the unit shipped. Designing a system for the consumer market that accommodated a plugin memory device was no easy task. The engineers had to devise a method that allowed the cartridge to communicate with the microprocessor without disrupting the processor’s static charge. Moreover, the system had to be robust enough to hold up through repeated insertions and removals of the cartridge.

And on top of introducing an onboard microprocessor, programmable game cartridges, and player versus computer gaming, the Channel F was the first console that allowed players to pause the game. The controller had a Hold button that could be used to stop the game and change parameters like game speed.

Lawson engineered a revolutionary console that introduced features that have been central to console gaming ever since. But was the Channel F successful? Well, not very.

Atari was working on their own cartridge-based system when Fairchild released the Channel F. Realizing they had to rush production or fall far behind, they released the Atari VCS in September 1977. The Channel F had a more powerful processor (1.79 MHz vs 1.19 MHz for the VCS), but Atari’s machine had twice as much RAM (128 vs 64 bytes) along with better graphics and sound. The Atari VCS outsold the Channel F, which led Fairchild to give up on the gaming industry. They sold the Channel F to Zircon International in 1979. Atari eventually rebranded the VCS as the Atari 2600 in 1982, and it is recognized today as one of the most successful and influential systems in the history of console gaming.

The end game

With Fairchild out of the gaming business and Atari on the rise, Lawson left Fairchild in 1980 and founded Videosoft, a company that made games for the Atari 2600. After Videosoft, he did some consulting and continued to do what he’d always done—tinkered, innovated, and invented in his workshop at home.

But over time as other gaming and Silicon Valley pioneers were recognized and honored, Lawson was largely forgotten. In 2011, Joseph Saulter, then leader of the Game Developers Association diversity committee, was asked when the group was going to get around to honoring Lawson. Saulter had never heard of him. When he was told about what Lawson had accomplished, Saulter, himself a black professional in the modern gaming industry, couldn’t believe that a man of Lawson’s stature had been ignored.

"I was really very emotional about it," Saulter told the Mercury News. "As a matter of fact, I started crying—just for somebody like him to be left out."

Saulter immediately made arrangements to remedy the situation. Three weeks later, Lawson was introduced and honored at the 2011 Game Developers Conference in San Francisco.

This professional recognition came in the nick of time. Lawson suffered from diabetes, and by 2011 he was blind in one eye and confined to a wheelchair after having had a leg amputated. Lawson passed away on April 9, 2011, one month after he was honored at the Game Developers Conference. He was 70 years old.

That overdue honor may have come at the last possible moment for Lawson, but luckily meaningful recognition for the inventor came earlier. Lawson told VCG a story about an encounter a few years earlier that he never forgot. He was walking down the Strip in Las Vegas one day when a young black kid came up to him on the street. “Are you Jerry Lawson?” the boy asked. Lawson said he was. “Thanks,” the kid replied. The boy simply shook Lawson’s hand and walked away.

For all of us who love console games today, be sure to also remember that kid every once and awhile—thanks, Mr. Lawson.