video game pioneer Gerald A. Lawson

U.S. video game pioneer Gerald A. Lawson of Santa Clara, Calif., has died of complications of diabetes at the age of 70, his wife says. Catherine Lawson told The New York Times her husband died April 9 in Mountain View. Lawson was a primarily self-taught engineer who designed the first home video game system with interchangeable game cartridges, the Times said. As director of engineering and marketing for the video game unit of Fairchild Semiconductor, Lawson brought the Fairchild Channel F home console to the marketplace in 1976. "He's absolutely a pioneer," Allan Alcorn, a creator of the video game Pong, told The San Jose Mercury News last month when Lawson was honored by the International Game Developers Association. "When you do something for the first time, there is nothing to copy."