Jack Tramiel starts Commodore

1954
Jack Tramiel starts Commodore

In 1954, Polish immigrant and Auschwitz survivor Jack Tramiel started the Commodore Portable Typewriter Company, the company that would become Commodore International.

Tramiel had already been running a small business repairing typewriters while living in New York and driving a taxicab. In 1954 he signed a contract with a Czechoslovakian company to manufacture their designs in Canada, and moved to Toronto to start production.

In 1962 the company was formally incorporated as Commodore Business Machines (CBM).

The company later made calculators, and when the designer told Tramiel that calculators were a dead end, and computers were the future - Jack Tramiel told him to build one and prove the point. Chuck Peddle, the designer, presented the Commodore PET.

Commodore went on to develop the world's best-selling home computer, the Commodore 64.

The company declared bankruptcy in 1994.

Related information:

Image:

  • Commodore portable typewriter instruction booklet
    Credit: Commodore Portable Typewriter Company


 

 

 


 

Jack Tramiel starts Commodore

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