Peter R. Jennings

Peter R. Jennings

Peter R. Jennings was born in Bedford, England, in 1950. In the 1960s his family moved to Ontario, Canada.

Jennings developed MicroChess shortly after leaving graduate school in New York; the code was sold on paper, so buyers had to manually enter the program using a keyboard. MicroChess was the first software to sell over 10,000 copies. Later versions, on the Apple II and the TRS-80, sold millions of copies. It was also available on the Commodore PET and Atari 400/800 platforms.

Jennings also developed the first model of the ChessMate, working for Commodore in 1977.

In 1976, along with Dan Fylstra, he co-founded the corporation Personal Software, which became VisiCorp, and was involved in the creation of VisiCalc, the first spreadsheet program. MicroChess sales helped to finance the development of VisiCalc.


 

 

 

 
Photograph of Peter R. Jennings Click for a larger version






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