While here in the 21st century of the industry, there may be a potential future where physical gaming is becoming more a secondary option, there was a time early in video game's infancy where physical carts or game cards were merely an idea. This idea came to fruition, courtesy of the ingenuity of one Gerald "Jerry" Lawson, a computer engineer from Brooklyn, New York. 

Lawson came from a very gifted and talented family. Mannings, his mother, served on the PTA for his local school. His grandfather was a physicist who would have to become a postmaster, as racial discrimination kept him from pursuing the field of physics any further. Lawson was heavily influenced by fellow African-American inventor George Washington Carver, and similarly took encouragement from his parents to pursue a career in science.

He began building arcades in his garage for fun, and also worked on ham radio and chemistry. Lawson would land a career at Fairchild and play an instrumental role in the creation of the Fairchild Channel F, released in 1976, a home family computer console that utilized one of the earliest incarnations of the game cartridge. He would eventually leave Fairchild and become the founder of VideoSoft, who would go on to develop games for the Atari 2600, with the first game being the unique shooting game, Atom Smasher, which was never officially released. 

By the mid 1980's Lawson would shut down VideoSoft and serve as consultant for the remainder of his career. Much of VideoSoft's works went unfinished or unpublished, such as Depth Charge, S.A.C. Alert, 3D Ghost Attack, and 3D Havoc, Digital Press' Scott Stilphen released Lawson's works in 2010 on 100 game carts each.

Jerry Lawson battled health complications from diabetes, and passed away April 9th, 2011, one month before being honored for IGDA (International Game Developers Association). He would have been 82 years old today.