20 Notable Black Americans in Telecom and Technology

Jerry Lawson pioneered home video gaming in the 1970s by helping create the Fairchild Channel F, the first home video game system with interchangeable games. A New York native, Lawson was a leading Black engineer working in computing at the dawn of the video game era. Though basic by today’s standards, Lawson’s work allowed people to play a variety of games in their homes and paved the way for systems such as the Atari 2600, Nintendo, Xbox and Playstation.