Commodore Business Machines
 |
|
| Industry |
Computer hardware Electronics Computer software |
|---|---|
| Fate | Bankruptcy |
| Founded | 1954 Toronto, Ontario, Canada |
| Defunct | 1994 |
| Headquarters | West Chester, Pennsylvania, United States |
|
Key people
|
Jack Tramiel (Founder) Irving Gould (Main investor and chairman) |
| Products |
Commodore PET Commodore VIC-20 Commodore 64 Commodore 128 Amiga Others |
| Website | http://www.commodorecorp.com |
Commodore International (or Commodore International Limited) was a North American home computer and electronics manufacturer. Commodore International (CI), along with its subsidiary Commodore Business Machines (CBM), participated in the development of the home–personal computer industry in the 1970s and 1980s. The company developed and marketed one of the world's best-selling desktop computers, the Commodore 64 (1982) and released its Amiga computer line in July 1985.
The company that would become Commodore Business Machines, Inc. was founded in 1954 in Toronto as the Commodore Portable Typewriter Company by Polish immigrant and Auschwitz survivor Jack Tramiel. For a few years, he had been living in New York, driving a taxicab and running a small business repairing typewriters, when he managed to sign a deal with a Czechoslovakian company to manufacture their designs in Canada. He moved to Toronto to start production. By the late 1950s a wave of Japanese machines forced most North American typewriter companies to cease business, but Tramiel instead turned to adding machines.
In 1955, the company was formally incorporated as Commodore Business Machines, Inc. (CBM) in Canada. In 1962, Commodore went public on the (NYSE), under the name of Commodore International Limited. In the late 1960s, history repeated itself when Japanese firms started producing and exporting adding machines. The company's main investor and chairman, Irving Gould, suggested that Tramiel travel to Japan to understand how to compete. Instead, he returned with the new idea to produce electronic calculators, which were just coming on the market.
Commodore soon had a profitable calculator line and was one of the more popular brands in the early 1970s, producing both consumer as well as scientific/programmable calculators. However, in 1975, Texas Instruments, the main supplier of calculator parts, entered the market directly and put out a line of machines priced at less than Commodore's cost for the parts. Commodore obtained an infusion of cash from Gould, which Tramiel used beginning in 1976 to purchase several second-source chip suppliers, including MOS Technology, Inc., in order to assure his supply. He agreed to buy MOS, which was having troubles of its own, only on the condition that its chip designer Chuck Peddle join Commodore directly as head of engineering.
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