Fairchild Semiconductor

Most days at lunchtime, Charlie Sporck pulls on his walking shoes and heads for the 14-acre park on the grounds of National Semiconductor's headquarters here. The long walks show on Sporck, still lean and fit at 60. Sporck prefers his business that way too. But Sporck knows he's got to put his company through some rigorous paces to get it back into shape.

To some it was like selling Mount Vernon to the redcoats: Fairchild Semiconductor, a pioneer of America's high-technology industries and the mother company of Silicon Valley, was being purchased by foreign rival Fujitsu of Japan. It was, in business terms, a friendly takeover. Executives of the ailing California computer chip maker had gone to Japan in search of a financial savior. Fujitsu had been invited, even urged, to bid. But to then-U.S.

Gerald A. "Jerry" Lawson, an electronics engineer and video game pioneer who led the team that developed the first cartridge-based home video game console system to hit the market in the mid-1970s, has died. He was 70. Lawson, who lived in Santa Clara, died April 9 of complications of diabetes in El Camino Hospital in Mountain View, said his daughter, Karen Lawson. One of a small number of African American engineers working in Silicon Valley, Lawson joined Fairchild Semiconductor in Mountain View in 1970 as an applications engineer working with the sales department.