If you’ve ever played a video game before, then you owe it to African American Electronic Engineer and Video Game Pioneer, Gerald “Jerry” Lawson! Jerry Lawson was one of the few Black engineers in Silicon Valley in the 1970s. In 1976, Lawson led a team of engineers that developed and released the first removable video game cartridges called the Fairchild Channel F. Channel F, which stood for “fun’, included the gaming world’s first digital, at-home joystick, and  first-ever “pause” button. But, it was most notable because players could switch out different video game cartridges. At the time, gaming consoles came preloaded with a set number of games. Though not a success during its release, Jerry Lawson’s idea paved the way for and was later adopted by brands like the Atari 2600, Nintendo, Xbox and Playstation. In 1980 he founded Videosoft, which made gaming software for the Atari 2600 and other developers. Likely the earliest Black-owned game development company, according to the Natio...