Founded in 1954 by Jack Tramiel
Headquarters: Ontario, Canada
Ceased operations in 1994
Commodore
|
Founded in 1954 by Jack Tramiel |
|
|
|
Army veteran Jack Tramiel was working in a typewriter repair shop in New York City in 1964 when he bought his own shop in the Bronx, then moved to Toronto where he named his new company Commodore. Soon, he was a manufacturer of typewriters and adding machines. Commodore went public in 1962, was successful, then ran into legal and financial trouble, leading to Tramiel surrendering partial control of the company to investors.
Tramiel moved operations to Silicon Valley and had success with a hand-held computer, but finding himself at the whim of suppliers, made a dramatic move by acquiring MOS Technology, a maker of computer chips — including the 6502 CPU, which powered not only Commodore's line of 8-bit home computers, but those of Apple and Atari as well.
|
|
|
|
To this day, it is likely that the C-64 is the largest-selling single model of computer in history, with tens of millions of units sold. The C-64 was also the first computer with a synthesizer chip; the SX-64 variant was the first color portable computer, and the Plus/4 (released in 1984) had integrated software (word processor, spreadsheet, telecommunications program) all loaded in ROM.
By the time the Commodore 128 was released, though, it was clear that 8-bit computers were coming to the end of their usefulness. The same team that had developed the Atari 400 and 800 home computers was independently working on a new 16-bit computer that would come to be known as the Amiga.
As the Amiga was being developed, though, Tramiel was being forced out of the company he had founded. In 1984, he purchased Atari from Warner Communications.
Commodore then outbid Tramiel and Atari, purchasing the rights to the Amiga. The Amiga 1000, released in 1985 in response to Apple's Macintosh, is recognized as the world's first true multimedia personal computer, featuring 4096 colors, custom chips for accelerated video and built-in video outputs for TVs and VCRs.
The Amiga's Mac-like operating system, designed by Carl Sassenrath, featured pre-emptive multitasking, messaging, scripting, and multitasking command-line consoles — features it would take more than a decade for the Intel-based Windows platform to catch up with.
Like the Mac and Atari's ST and TT line of computers, the Amigas were built around the Motorola 68000 16-bit CPU. Later versions of the Amigas incorporated the 68030 and 68040 CPUs. A plug-in video editing console for the Amiga, known as the Video Toaster, made Amigas standard equipment at TV stations and university media labs around the world.
By the early '90s, though, Commodore was struggling just as much as Atari. Neither company had spent much money on consumer advertising, and sales had suffered as a result. As sales dried up, so did new software titles for the Amiga, and in May 1995 ESCOM AG, a large PC retailer based in Bensheim, Germany, purchased all of Commodore International's rights and patents, including Amiga. A new susidiary, Amiga Technologies GmbH resumed computer production. Gateway later purchased the rights to Amiga, and promised a next-generation 64-bit version of the Amiga, but in 1999 sold the rights without having ever introduced a new machine.
New investors decided to make a go of the Amiga line again, and with Amiga set up as an independent company, moved into the new millennium with plans for a new generation of Amiga computers and operating system.
|
|
Close this window to return to the Computer Museum of America.
