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Jack Tramiel

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Jack Tramiel
Born
Jacek Trzmiel

(1928-12-13)December 13, 1928
Łódź, Poland
DiedApril 8, 2012(2012-04-08) (aged 83) [1]
Monte Sereno, California, USA[2]
Known forCommodore founder;
Atari Corporation founder and CEO
Spouse
Helen
​
(m. 1947)​
Children3

Jack Tramiel (Polish: Jacek Trzmiel, Trzmiel means "bumblebee"; December 13, 1928 – April 8, 2012) was a Polish-born American businessman, best known for founding Commodore International,[3] the manufacturer of the Commodore PET, Commodore 64, Commodore 128, Commodore Amiga, and other Commodore models of home computers.

Early years

Tramiel was born as Jacek Trzmiel in Łódź, Poland,[4] into a Jewish family.

After the German invasion of Poland in 1939 his family was transported by German occupiers to the Jewish ghetto in Łódź, where he worked in a garment factory. When the ghettos were liquidated his family was sent to the Auschwitz concentration camp. He was examined by Dr. Mengele and selected for a work party, after which he and his father were sent to the labor camp Ahlem near Hanover, while his mother remained at Auschwitz. Like many other inmates, his father was reported to have died of typhus in the work camp; however, Tramiel believed he was killed by an injection of gasoline. Tramiel was rescued from the labor camp in April 1945 by the 84th Infantry Division.

In November 1947, Tramiel emigrated to the United States. He soon joined the U.S. Army, where he learned how to repair office equipment, including typewriters.

Commodore

Main article: Commodore International

Typewriters and calculators

In 1953, while working as a taxi driver, Tramiel bought a shop in the Bronx to repair office machinery,[5] securing a $25,000 loan for the business from a U.S. Army entitlement.[6] He named it Commodore Portable Typewriter.

In 1955, Tramiel signed a deal with a Czechoslovak company to assemble and sell their typewriters in North America. However, as Czechoslovakia was part of the Warsaw Pact, they could not be imported directly into the U.S., so Tramiel set up Commodore Business Machines in Toronto.[5] Tramiel wanted a military-style name for his company, but names like Admiral and General were already taken, so he settled on the Commodore name.[7]

In 1962, Commodore went public. But the arrival of Japanese typewriters in the U.S. market made the selling of Czechoslovakian typewriters unprofitable. Struggling for cash, the company sold 17% of its stock to Canadian businessman Irving Gould, taking in $400,000.[5] It used the money to re-launch the company in the adding machine business, which was profitable for a time before the Japanese entered that field as well. Stung twice by the same source, Gould suggested that Tramiel travel to Japan to learn why they were able to outcompete North Americans in their own local markets. It was during this trip that Tramiel saw the first digital calculators, and decided that the mechanical adding machine was a dead end.[8]

When Commodore released its first calculators, combining an LED display from Bowmar and an integrated circuit from Texas Instruments (TI), it found a ready market. However, after slowly realizing the size of the market, TI decided to cut Commodore out of the middle and released their own calculators at a price point below the price that TI sold just the chips to Commodore. Gould once again rescued the company, injecting another $3 million, which allowed Commodore to purchase MOS Technology, Inc. an IC design and semiconductor manufacturer, a company which had also supplied Commodore with calculator ICs.[8] When their lead designer, Chuck Peddle, told Tramiel that calculators were a dead end and computers were the future, Tramiel told him to build one to prove the point.

Home computers

Peddle responded with the Commodore PET, based on his company's MOS Technology 6502 processor. It was first shown publicly at the Chicago Consumer Electronics Show in 1977, and soon the company was receiving 50 calls a day from dealers wanting to sell the computer.[8] The PET would go on to be a success — especially in the education field, where its all-in-one design was a major advantage. Much of their success with the PET came from the business decision to sell directly to large customers, instead of selling to them through a dealer network. The first PET computers were sold primarily in Europe, where Commodore had also introduced the first wave of digital handheld calculators.[8]

As prices dropped and the market matured, the monochrome (green text on black screen) PET was at a disadvantage in the market when compared to machines like the Apple II and Atari 800, which offered color graphics, and could be hooked to a television as an inexpensive display. Commodore responded with the VIC-20, and then the Commodore 64, which would go on to be the best-selling home computer of all time [citation needed]. The Commodore VIC-20 was the first microcomputer to sell one million units. The Commodore 64 sold several million units. It was during this time period that Tramiel coined the famous phrase, "We need to build computers for the masses, not the classes."[9]

Atari

Main article: Atari Corporation

In January 1984, Tramiel resigned from Commodore. After a short break from the computer industry, he formed a new company named Tramel Technology, Ltd., in order to design and sell a next-generation home computer.[10] The company was named "Tramel" to help ensure that it would be pronounced correctly (i.e., "tra - mel" instead of "tra - meal").[11]

In July 1984, Tramel Technology bought the Consumer Division of Atari Inc. from Warner Communications.[10] The division had fallen on hard times, due to the video game crash of 1983. TTL was then renamed Atari Corporation.

In the late 1980s, Tramiel decided to step away from day-to-day operations at Atari, naming his son, Sam, President and CEO. In 1995, Sam suffered a heart attack, and his father returned to oversee operations. In 1996, Tramiel sold Atari to disk-drive manufacturer Jugi Tandon Storage in a reverse merger deal. The newly merged company was named JTS Corporation, and Tramiel joined the JTS board.

Later years

Tramiel was a co-founder of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, which was opened in 1993. He was among many other survivors of the Ahlem labor camp who were tracked down by U.S. Army veteran Vernon Tott, who was among the 84th Division which rescued survivors from the camp and had taken and kept photographs of at least 16 of the survivors in storage until 2003. Tott, who died of cancer in 2003, was personally commemorated by Tramiel with an inscription on one of the Holocaust Museum's walls saying "To Vernon W. Tott, My Liberator and Hero".[12]

Tramiel died on April 8, 2012, of heart failure [13] Jack Tramiel, a pioneer in computers, dies at 83|date = April 10, 2012| author = at the age of 83. He was survived by a wife, Helen, and three sons, Samuel, Leonard and Garry.

References

  1. ^ Computer Legend and Gaming Pioneer Jack Tramiel Dies at Age 83,2012/04/09, By Dave Thier, Forbes
  2. ^ "Commodore founder Jack Tramiel dead at 83" from Computerworld
  3. ^ Terdiman, Daniel. "Woz, meet Jack Tramiel". CNET Networks, Inc. Retrieved 2008-09-28.
  4. ^ "Jack Tramiel". NNDB. Retrieved 2008-09-28.
  5. ^ a b c "Chronological History of Commodore Computer". Up & Running Technologies Incorporated. Retrieved 2008-09-28.
  6. ^ "You Don't Know Jack!". Running. Retrieved 2008-09-28.
  7. ^ Del Conte, Natali (1994-03-29). "As Commodore 64 Turns 25, Founders Reminisce". www.pcmag.com. Retrieved 2007-12-14.
  8. ^ a b c d "Early Commodore History!". Running. Retrieved 2010-03-15.
  9. ^ "Gamer Decades: The 1980s", IGN
  10. ^ a b "Time Warner Companies Inc, et al. · SC 13D/A". www.secinfo.com. 3/29/94. Retrieved 2007-12-06. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
  11. ^ Takahashi, Dean. "A few words with Jack Tramiel and the Commodore 64 gang". Media News Group. Retrieved 2008-09-28.
  12. ^ Susan Stamberg (September 25, 2007). "Holocaust Survivors Honor Camp Liberator". NPR.
  13. ^ Template:Cite web url = http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/11/technology/jack-tramiel-a-pioneer-in-computers-dies-at-83.html

Further reading

  • The Home Computer Wars: An Insider's Account of Commodore and Jack Tramiel by Michael Tomczyk, Compute, 1984, ISBN 0-942386-75-2
  • On the Edge: The Spectacular Rise and Fall of Commodore by Brian Bagnall, Variant Press, 2005, ISBN 0-9738649-0-7

External links

Template:Persondata

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