Inventor of the Video Game Cartridge passes.

Jerry Lawson, who developed the revolutionary gaming technology on the 1970’s, passed away on Saturday, 09 April 2011.

Before Lawson developed his programmable cartridges for the Channel F system in 1976, the available game systems were limited to whatever games that had been pre-built into the console. The ability to have a separate cartridge that contained the code for the games helped to change the way gaming technology could develop, and opened the doors for early giants such as the Atari 2600 a year later.

Although Lawson remained relatively obscure, despite his work, he was formally recognized last month by the International Game Developers Association for all of his contributions to the industry. These include a number of games and software he developed, both for Fairchild Semiconductor and later for Atari, through his company called Videosoft.

Source 1up.com & Mercury News