Watch: You Have a Black Man to Thank for Your Video Games

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Black Inventors: Gerald Lawson

All right, listen up, gamers. Gerald Lawson is the pioneer of games you almost never hear about.

In the mid-’70s, he perfected the game cartridge, making it possible to play multiple video games at home. As a teenager, the electronics genius operated a radio station from a housing project in the Jamaica neighborhood of New York City’s Queens borough and created the arcade game “Demolition Derby” in his garage in the early ’70s.

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Learn more about Gerald “Jerry” Lawson in the video above.