Google Doodle celebrates the 82nd birthday of video game legend Gerald Jerry Lawson

Google Doodle on December 1 paid tribute to Gerald Jerry Lawson, a pioneer in modern gaming, on his 82nd birth anniversary with an interactive game.

Today’s Google Doodle features games designed by three American guest artists and game designers: Davionne Gooden, Lauren Brown, and Momo Pixel, as per Google.

Lawson was born in Brooklyn, New York on December 1, 1940. He tinkered with electronics from an early age, repairing televisions around his neighborhood and creating his own radio station using recycled parts. He attended Queens College and City College of New York before departing early to start his career in Palo Alto, California. At the time, the city and its surrounding region had become known as “Silicon Valley” due to the explosion of new, innovative tech companies starting up in the area.

Upon arriving in California, Lawson joined Fairchild Semiconductor as an engineering consultant. A few years later, Lawson was promoted to Director of Engineering and Marketing of Fairchild’s video game department where he led the development of the Fairchild Channel F system. This was the first home video game system console that featured interchangeable game cartridges, an 8-way digital joystick, and a pause menu. The Channel F paved the way for future gaming systems like the Atari, SNES, Dreamcast, and more.

In 1980, he left Fairchild and started his own company, VideoSoft—one of the earliest Black-owned video game development companies. The company created software for the Atari 2600, popularizing the cartridge Lawson and his team developed. Although they closed five years later, Lawson had solidified himself as a pioneer in the industry and continued to consult multiple engineering and video game companies throughout the rest of his career.

Gerald Jerry Lawson’s achievements are memorialized at the World Video Game Hall of Fame in Rochester, New York. Lawson died in 2011.