Atari famously brought the video game craze into the home with consoles that played removable cartridges rather than having games built into the system, but it wasn’t the first company to offer such a setup. The Fairchild Channel F did it earlier and one of Fairchild’s chief engineers and inventors, Jerry Lawson, just passed away. An excerpt from a new article about him on 1UP: “Engineer, inventor and video game pioneer Jerry Lawson passed away Saturday of unknown causes.

Lawson was among the earliest video game engineers. His first arcade title, Chicago Coins’ Demolition Derby, was developed in his garage in the early 1970s.

Lawson is remembered as the inventor of Fairchild Semiconductor’s home video game console, the Channel F. Released in 1976, the Channel F is the first console with programmable game cartridges; before it, home video game systems only played the games that were built into them.

Until recently, Lawson’s name was not very well known, even amongst the video game community. Fortunately, Lawson was honored by the International Game Developers Association’s Minority Special Interest Group at the Game Developers Conference just last month.”