Fairchild isn’t the first name that comes to mind when it comes to video games. Consumer electronics wasn’t really their thing, and that might explain why they lost interest after only 3 years. But it’s easy to forget just how much of a disruptive force in the technology industry Fairchild was. In this blog post, we’ll explore Fairchild’s brief foray into video game consoles in the 1970s and its lasting influence that we’re still feeling today.
Background on the Fairchild Channel F
It was 1974. The market was becoming flooded with so-called TV games. These were consoles that plugged into a television set and played a simple electronic version of table tennis with blips on the screen. Some could play a few variations of it. But they were all hardwired, using logic gates, to play, at most, five or six games. David Heiserman published a 544-page book in 1978 about how those games worked and how to build them yourself. That’s if you didn’t want to just buy a Pong-on-a-chip from a company like General Instrument, wire it up with some support circuitry, and go to market with that.
Video games were in danger of becoming a passing fad. But two employees of Alpex Computer Corporation, Wallace Kirschner and Lawrence Haskel, had an idea. They developed a prototype video game base unit using an Intel 8080 microprocessor and interchangeable circuit boards containing ROM chips.
They unsuccessfully tried to license the technology to several television manufacturers. So they contacted Fairchild, who sent engineer Jerry Lawson to evaluate the system. Lawson suggested Fairchild license the technology, which the company did in January 1976.
But who was Fairchild?
Fairchild and Texas Instruments are both credited with independently inventing the computer chip. Fairchild was the company that created Silicon Valley. Silicon Valley was where Fairchild decided to set up operations, and the industry kind of sprung up around it. And the two largest manufacturers of CPUs, Intel and AMD, were both founded by groups of engineers who left Fairchild, in two different waves. Fairchild alumni include Gil Amelio, Federico Faggin, Andy Grove, Gordon Moore, Robert Noyce, and Jerry Sanders. Besides being a leader in the semiconductor field, it was an incubator for industry visionaries who went on to lead other companies.
The hardware
It made sense for Fairchild to try its hand at video games. Pretty much everything the console needed was something Fairchild was either already making or was entirely capable of making. Rather than using Intel chips, Fairchild substituted its own CPU and video display controller for what the prototype used. Fairchild could also make any of the 74-series logic chips they needed to tie the major chips together. Fairchild also was capable of making RAM, but they sourced RAM chips from Mostek.
Since Fairchild could make the chips, they could build the product for less money than just about anyone else, which would give them a lot of pricing flexibility.
The Channel F’s resolution of 104×60 pixels wasn’t as high as what Atari was working on, which would have a resolution of 160×192 pixels. But Fairchild’s design had a frame buffer, which made it easier to program. It could officially only draw three sprites per line, but software tricks could permit more. Software tricks could also permit the console to play against a human player, and not just act like a scorekeeper like it did in the TV games that preceeded it.
The cartridges
But the whole thing depended on figuring out how to design the game cartridges so they could be safely plugged in and unplugged, and not wear out. That idea made people nervous. Plugging in circuit boards was something trained technicians and engineers do. This concept hinged on anyone, including children, being able to do it. Fairchild put Jerry Lawson on the job of figuring that out. Lawson said they were nervous because no one had tried it before. They didn’t have any data to tell them how long the system would hold up. The government was nervous too. They wanted assurances that consumers wouldn’t have any risk of electric shock.
The whole idea of building a library of around 20 game cartridges that could be swapped anytime you got tired of the game you were playing hinged on figuring all that out. Without figuring that out, you couldn’t have a second-generation game console.
I’ll argue that Fairchild was the right company to navigate the situation. Their biggest customer was the United States Government, so they knew how to navigate the regulatory approval process.
Atari wasn’t far behind Fairchild, and they had already navigated the difficult waters of getting approval to connect a game machine to a television. But with Fairchild a year ahead of them, they didn’t have to. They could ride Fairchild’s coattails and just worry about not violating any of Fairchild’s patents.
Jerry Lawson
We also can’t tell the story of the Fairchild Channel F without telling the story of Jerry Lawson. Jerry Lawson was a native of New York City. His grandfather was a postmaster and his father was a laborer. Both of them were very interested in science, but hadn’t been able to pursue scientific careers because of the color of their skin. That’s sometimes called the “up south” phenomenon. Lawson credited his first grade teacher with recognizing his potential, even at that early age, and encouraging him to try to follow in the footsteps of George Washington Carver.
By the time he was a teenager, Lawson was an amateur radio hobbyist, building his own radios from supplies he purchased at electronics supply houses. He was also making house calls repairing TV sets for his neighbors. This parallels the experience of his counterpart at competitor APF, Edward Smith, who learned electronics partly from repairing televisions and radios for his neighbors in Brooklyn.
Lawson was a member of the Homebrew Computer Club, so he met Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak. He interviewed Steve Wozniak for a job and declined to hire him.
At the time Fairchild drafted Lawson for the Channel F project, he was working on building a video game in his garage.
After leaving Fairchild, Lawson started his own company, consulting on video game design. So even though Fairchild didn’t stay involved in the industry, Lawson did.
What the Fairchild Channel F was like
The Fairchild Channel F was a hulking piece of equipment that screamed 1970s industrial design. It was about 13 inches wide and 12 inches deep, and 3 1/2 inches tall. It had sharp angles like a late 70s muscle car and a faux wood grain base to match the faux wood grain on the console TV you were going to connect it to. The Channel F was futuristic and contemporary all at once.
It came with hockey and tennis games built in, and three more cartridges were available in 1976. Fairchild released 11 more cartridges in 1977.
And it was technically sophisticated for its time. Fairchild put 2 KB of RAM in its console, versus 128 bytes of RAM in the Atari console. Fairchild used a full 8-bit processor where Atari went to the manufacturer of the cheapest 8-bit processor and ask them to make a cut down version of their already cut down processor.
But that proved to be its undoing. Atari’s console was less sophisticated, in order to have some hope of meeting Fairchild’s price point. Its CPU had to both handle game logic and send precisely timed instructions to its video controller on what to do to draw the screen. It had a strict budget of 76 clock cycles per display line to handle both. It didn’t leave much time for the game to think, lending itself to fast-paced shooter games. Fairchild’s console lended itself to more complex games, since its programmers didn’t have to count clock cycles.
Initially sales were relatively brisk, with 250,000 units sold in its first year. That’s a modest count, but it’s important to remember the system was expensive. By today’s standards, $170 for a console and $20 for a game doesn’t sound like a lot. But in 1976, $170 was the equivalent of $910 in 2024 currency, and $20 was the equivalent of $110.
Atari ascendant
Atari’s library played to its consoles strengths, which happened to line up well with what the public wanted. After Atari entered the market in 1977, Fairchild’s sales tailed off. The Fairchild Channel F only managed another 100,000 sales in its lifetime.
And in 1979, things got worse. That year, Atari released its Space Invaders cartridge and Atari’s sales took another jump. That same year, Fairchild gave up, selling the Channel F off to Zircon International. Zircon continued selling the Channel F as a budget console until 1983, but in spite of being first to market, the Channel F ended up being an also ran. It sold 350,000 units when Atari sold closer to 30 million units during its console’s lifetime. Meanwhile, Coleco and Mattel each sold around 4 million units and Magnavox sold around 2 million units.
If you’ve never heard of the Channel F before, that’s why.
What went wrong: The Games
The problem was the games. Nobody knew in 1976 or 1977 exactly what made a great video game yet. And where Atari opted to make fast-paced action games, Fairchild opted for games that were generally slower paced and a bit more intellectual. The reviews reflected that. Some reviews said the games were boring. Others said you would either love the games or hate them. Taken as a whole, even Ken Uston, the most positive reviewer, rated the Channel F’s library as inferior to that of the Bally Astrocade, Atari 2600, Mattel Intellivision, and Magnavox Odyssey.
Only 26 games were released for the Channel F during its lifetime, and only five of those were after 1978. The library was heavy on puzzle, card, strategy, and sports games. The Channel F did get a reasonable Space Invaders clone called Alien Invasion, but it came out in 1981. Like the APF MP1000, the Space Invaders clone was the last game commercially released for the console during its lifetime.
A few homebrew titles were released in the 21st century, including arcade conversions, which seems to indicate the Channel F might have been able to give the 2600 a bit more of a run for its money.
If Fairchild had the idea first to license Space Invaders, it might have ended up owning the industry, especially because of its vertical integration. Atari was buying all of the ICs that went into its console, where Fairchild could make them themselves.
The Channel F’s video capability, with its very blocky 106×60 graphics, was a drawback. So Fairchild would have needed to release a successor with enhanced graphics earlier than Atari did if it wanted to stay competitive.
What happened to Fairchild
Schlumberger, a company primarily in the business of oil drilling, purchased Fairchild Semiconductor in 1979. National Semiconductor bought Fairchild in 1987, and spun it off as an independent company again in 1997. In September 2016, Fairchild was acquired by ON Semiconductor.
David Farquhar is a computer security professional, entrepreneur, and author. He started his career as a part-time computer technician in 1994, worked his way up to system administrator by 1997, and has specialized in vulnerability management since 2013. He invests in real estate on the side and his hobbies include O gauge trains, baseball cards, and retro computers and video games. A University of Missouri graduate, he holds CISSP and Security+ certifications. He lives in St. Louis with his family.
“I’ll argue that Fairchild was the right company to navigate the situation. Their biggest customer was the United States Government, so they knew how to navigate the regulatory approval process.”
So, an interesting footnote that helps prove your point. When Schlumberger acquired Fairchild, there were some concerns about potential antitrust issues. As a preemptive move to gain government approval for the deal, Schulmberger agreed to divest one of its other subsidiaries, the Heath Company, which famously produced Heathkits. At the time, Heath had a deal with Digital Equipment Corporation to manufacture micro-computer kits based on older DEC models. Schlumberger knew this created a potential conflict of interest with Fairchild, so they sold Heath off.
The buyer was actually Zenith, which turned Heath’s computer business into Zenith Data Systems, which for a few years was a pretty big deal when it came to supply microcomputers to the federal government.