Samantha Wagner - Diversity in Technology

When you think about video games, names like Nintendo, Playstation, Xbox and even Atari might come to mind, but probably not the name Jerry Lawson--a Black man from Queens who changed the gaming industry forever. His contributions to the field helped shape how we play video games to this day, and he had to overcome significant challenges to get there. Contributions to Technology Jerry Lawson is best known for creating the first cartridge-based video game console. In the 1970s, Jerry led a team at Fairfield Semiconductor that developed the first gaming console to use a removable cartridge--the Fairchild Channel F. Before this, video games were built directly into consoles, so if you wanted to play a different game, you had to buy a whole new system! Jerry's innovation allowed players to swap out games using cartridges, which opened the door for the massive gaming industry we know today. This technology directly laid the foundation for the consoles that would come after it--Atari, Ni...

The vastness of space and the endless possibilities it holds have long captured the human imagination. For Mae Jemison , the wonder of space was more than just a dream—it became her reality when she made history as the first Black woman to travel into orbit. Driven by her passion for science, she once said “Never be limited by other people’s limited imaginations.” With this spirit and relentless determination, she broke barriers in space exploration and technology, inspiring countless others to pursue their dreams, no matter their challenges. Contributions to Technology Though May Jemison is a name that will forever go down in history as the first Black woman to travel into space, her accomplishments do not end there. During her 1992 mission on the Endeavor space shuttle, she conducted experiments on weightlessness and motion which substantially helped scientists back on Earth to learn about how space travel affects the human body. As a trained engineer and physician, her expertise...