Short answers, pulled from the story.
The United States market absorbed 310,000 home video game cartridges in 1976. This event marked the beginning of a physical revolution in entertainment that defined a generation of gaming.
Wallace Kirschner, Lawrence Haskel, and Jerry Lawson collaborated at Fairchild Semiconductor to create the Fairchild Channel F. This console was the first to feature games on interchangeable ROM cartridges.
The Texas Instruments TI-59 programmable scientific calculator utilized interchangeable ROM cartridges to provide users with specialized software. These modules served as pre-loaded libraries of functions that expanded the device capabilities without requiring the user to write code.
Nintendo launched the Switch in 2017 featuring small cartridges instead of optical discs. The company continued this approach with the release of the Switch 2 in 2025.
The physical dimensions of the cartridges varied from the large 2.2-inch by 2.56-inch Game Boy cartridges to the tiny Game Cards used in the DS and Switch lines. The Nintendo 64 Game Pak was also a substantial piece of hardware that housed the game data.