Jack Tramiel, the founder of Commodore, passed away yesterday, April 8, at the age of 83. As the man who brought the VIC-20, Commodore 64 and and Atari ST to market, Tramiel's business savvy helped to bring computing to the masses. The Commodore 64, alone, did more to expand the audience for home computers than just about any of the systems introduced in the 1980's.
In December of 2007, I had the pleasure of meeting Jack at the 25th anniversary party for the C64 at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, California. It was a spectacular evening, which is fully documented in photographs here.
I wrote a piece that evening which for some reason I didn't manage to get onto the Web. Tramiel talked about his life and work that evening. I attempted to collect as much of his talk into this piece, at the time. Here, then, is entire article about the Commodore 64 25th Anniversary.
Tramiel kicked off the evening by speaking to New York Times journalist John Markoff. During their chat on stage, Tramiel recalled the triumphs of his life. Tramiel was born in Poland in 1928, and was sent to the Auschwitz concentration camp during World War II. When he was liberated by the Americans in 1945, Tramiel emigrated to the United States. Once there, he joined the army.
“When I came to the US I definitely felt I owed something to this country. I believe always in paying back. I lived in the east side of New York City for the first three months, and almost felt like I was back in Poland with the smell of the herring and the onions. I felt that I had to learn what this country was all about, so I joined the army, and served the country. That took me to Fort Dix,” said Tramiel.
At Fort Dix, Tramiel learned how to repair typewriters. That skill would support him when he returned to civilian life in New York. Eventually, after working two jobs and continuing to fix typewriters, Tramiel quit to start his own business across the street from Forham University. That school sent their typewriters to Tramiel for repairs. Before long, he was manufacturing his own machines.
The name of the company, right from the start, was Commodore. Tramiel said he got the name from his time in the army. “I wanted to call my company General, but there's so many Generals in the U.S. General Electric, General Motors. Then I went to Admiral, but that was taken too. So I wind up in Berlin, Germany with my wife and we were in a cab, and the cab made a short stop and in front of it was an Texas Instruments. Soon, TI decided that it wanted to be the one in control of the expanding market for handheld digital calculators, and the company slowed down chip shipments to Tramiel.
Thus, Commodore's future, Tramiel decided, would be held in owning and controlling its own chip supply. Commodore had previously purchased processors from MOS Technologies, Tramiel found himself talking to that company in the late 70's.
“I called them. We met. They were in very bad financial shape. They needed help. I decided to buy this company and turn it over to become strictly a Commodore supplier, except for companies like Apple to which we would supply some,” said Tramiel.
Along with the purchase of MOS, Commodore inherited a young developer named Chuck Peddle, who wanted to build a personal computer, a relatively odd-ball idea for 1976. Eventually, Peddle produced the Commodore PET, also known as the personal electronic transactor.
At the time, said Tramiel, he had no idea how many PETs to build. “We were told why don't you go up to Arthur D. Little, and they will tell you what this market can stand. The first thing [Arthur D. Little] told me was cost that it would cost $5 million and take one year. Then I found out that the same company had told IBM not to buy Xerox. I decided 'nope, gonna go another way.' We went and we advertised the PET in the Wall Street Journal: 3 full pages. A couple weeks later we had $3 million in sales, and we knew we had a winner,” said Tramiel.
The PET gave way to the VIC-20, the first personal computer to sell one million units. But that was nothing compared to Commodore's next product.
In August of 1982, the Commodore 64 peaked its head out from the shelves of Sears and Montgomery Wards around the country. From the time of its release to the time of its discontinuation in 1995, Tramiel estimated that his company sold around 30 million units. “I remember we sold 480,000 to 500,000 computers a month. That slowed down when I left in 1984. I understand we sold between 22 million and 30 million units,” said Tramiel.
Of course games were, perhaps, the C64's greatest contribution to the world of computer history. With classics such as Ultima III, Boulder Dash, Commando, The Last Ninja, and Lode Runner all made the system a huge success around the world. The system's unrivalled ability to produce 16-color graphics and three-channel sound made it the first major platform for graphics and sound demos, which continue today. Now known as the demo scene, graphic and visual programmers made the C64 into a media presentation system long before the MP3 and the Divx codec.
Tramiel said he was aware of all this creativity his product unleashed. “People came over to me at shows and told me how successful they are, and I was very proud of it,” he said.
Perhaps the single greatest strength of the C64 was its price tag. When it was introduced in Las Vegas in early 1982, most show-goers found it impossible to think that this computer with 64KB of RAM could be sold for $595. The secret was Tramiel's decision the buy MOS Technologies, and his philosophy of business: “I believe that if you can afford it, you should always sell a product for no more than 100% of the price it costs to produce it.”
Tramiel's peers was also in attendance to commemorate the 25th anniversary of the C64. Al Alcorn, employee number one at Atari, said that, when he was with that company (long before Tramiel purchased its Consumer Division and appropriated the name), Commodore was seen as untouchable. “We came up with the Atari computer to stop Steve (Wozniak) from stealing our employees (at Apple). We wanted to avoid competing with Commodore because of that price,” said Acorn.
Steve Wozniak, co-founder of Apple Computer, said that his own company's machines were often seen as too expensive after the C64 arrived. “After a while, every time I went to shows they had their C64's! This was at one show after another after another after another. Of course, they wanted an Apple, but they couldn't afford one,” said Wozniak.
But Tramiel and Wozniak share more than their storied pasts in the personal computer business. Tramiel related a little known tale during the proceedings at the behest of Markoff. Tramiel, like Wozniak, had a near-death experience on a plane in the 1980's.
“At Commodore we had a plane called the PET Jet. [Tramiel's wife] Helen and I and 6 other members of Commodore went from New York to California,” said Tramiel, “but we made a stop to pick up dealers in Chicago. On the way from Chicago to San Jose, the plane started smoking. There were no brakes, no radio. The smoke got very black. I heard a signal of some kind, and we landed in Des Moines Iowa. We exited the plane, and after a few minutes, the plane blew up.”
