Tech's Day 19 in Black History:So much more...

Through school, TV, and other media we usually hear the same names during Black History like Martin Luther King Jr, Harriet Tubman, Malcolm X, but there is so much more. 

 While at the home of the 2016 National Champions the Clemson Tigers, I had a professor, Dr. Henry Lewis Suggs, in college that made us read and study about others in Black History, the ones that weren't taught in schools, churches or the media. The names you commonly hear and the ones I listed above were excluded.  Dr. Suggs established the African American Studies Program (AAS) at Clemson where he was then inspired to publish four scholarly books and dozens of scholarly articles.  So, thank you Dr. Suggs for inspiring me to look deeper and to study  to learn about these great people in African American History.

 Today at church, our youth were presented by three teachers; who presented a male and female African American in history that they may have yet heard about like Claudette Covin who refused to give up her seat on the bus nine months before Rosa Parks or Carter G. Woodson who was one of the first scholars to study African American history.  Why wasn't Tech invited? Anywho...

One of your youth said he wanted to make video games, so now Tech was asked to mention Gerald A. Lawson; the man behind the first video game console that was mention in the previous blogs Techs in Black History....

GERALD A. LAWSON



Do you own any of the X box, PlayStation, or Nintendo systems? Or have you every played on a friends? Do you call yourself a gamer? Well, you can thank Gerald A. Lawson, a self taught engineer who created the first home video game system with interchangeable parts!! That's right, gamers, his work paved the way for Nintendo, Xbox and PlayStation.

It all started in 1976 with the Fairchild Channel F Home Entertainment System that became the bases for modern systems. Lawson was the director of engineering and marketing for Fairchild Semiconductor, where Apple's Computer's co-found Mike Markula had headed Marketing. Lawson also founded and rand Videosoft, a video game development company that made software for the Atari 2600. He also made one of the earliest arcade games, Demolition Derby, which debuted not to long after Pong.

In the 1970s he joined the Silicon Valley's Homebrew Computer club where at the time he was the only black member. While he was with the club, he met Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak. Lawson was born December 1, 1940 and died April 9, 2011. It was until March 2011, that Lawson was honored as an industry pioneer by the International Game Developers Association shortly before his death.


Check out the African American Tech Inventors  blog post by Clicking Here!