The Commodore Turns 25
"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."
Jack Tramiel, Founder of Commodore
MOUNTAIN VIEW, CA -- Though the event itself is a few months late, the 25th anniversary of the Commodore 64 personal computer was celebrated last night at the Computer History Museum. A who's who of Silicon Valley legends turned out to recognize the anniversary, including Apple cofounder Steve Wozniak, IBM PC creator William Lowe, former CEO of Atari Al Alcorn, and the better part of the Tramiel family. Chief among the honored guests was Jack Tramiel, the founder of Commodore, who made his first public speaking appearance in 15 years at the event.
Tramiel kicked off the evening by speaking with New York Times editor John Markoff. During their chat on stage, Tramiel recalled the triumphs of his life. He was born in Poland in 1928, sent to the Auschwitz concentration camp during World War II, freed when the camp was liberated by the Americans in 1945, and emigrated to the United States, where he joined the army.
"When I came to the U.S. 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 Opel Commodore," said Tramiel.
In the '60s, Tramiel took a trip to Japan and saw the future. "I made a trip to Japan and I realized that the world was changing. We would have electronic machines, electronic calculators. I travel quite a bit around the world, and I found out that the most successful countries are ones that approach business like war, especially like Japan. You are there to win. As soon as you have your wings down, you lose. You have to be your own biggest competitor," said Tramiel.
Tramiel jumped with both feet into the electronic calculator business. At the outset, Tramiel bought his chips from 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.
Jack Tramiel poses with his most successful product.
Wozniak (left) and Tramiel, before the event.
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 '70s.
"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 oddball 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 [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, three 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 1 million units. But that was nothing compared to Commodore's next product.
In August of 1982, the Commodore 64 peeked 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. 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 unrivaled ability to produce 16-color graphics and three-channel sound made it the first major platform for graphics and sound demos. 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 at a trade show 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 to 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 percent of the price it costs to produce it."
The Commodore Turns 25 continues here.
