Commodore International

Commodore was founded in 1954 by the polish business entrepreneur Jack Tramiel, in The Bronx, New York, after years interned in German concentration camps during the second world war, left him feeling the world owned him a favour. The story goes that upon leaving the prison camp, he ordered a meal at a local restaurant - which he then didn't pay for. He then realised that what the ruined city really needed was administration. And for that there needed to be typewriters. So he ordered a taxi which took him to the people who made the typewriters, and they were so impressed that Jack had arrived by taxi, that they immediately leased him the machines on credit. He then sold the typewriters on Sale or Return, and ordered more typewriters on the money be made from those, and made some profit.

By the 1950's Jack had earned enough money to emigrate to America, where he immediately joined the Army for a term, and then returned to open his own typewriter repair store in New York in 1953. He chose Commodore in '54 because he wanted a name that sounded very important and top flight, General was already used by lots of companies, including General Electric and General Motors. Others were also taken by other companies, so he chose the next rank down which was Commodore.

The company moved to Toronto in 1958, and officially establish themselves as Commodore Business Machines, or CBM, in 1960. At this time they begin to invest in the manufacturing of office furniture and filing cabinets.

Canadian attorney and financier Irving Gould takes control of the company in 1966 to bail Commodore out of debts, and a lawsuit for business malpractice, and this results in Jack investing in the production of electronic calculators.

Despite taking advantage of all the latest technology, including programmable calculators and Liquid Crystal Displays, Texas Instruments still manage to undercut Commodore in a 5 year price war, which saw Commodore's pocket calculator sales decline dramatically. By 1972, Commodore were virtually out of the calculator market, and instead sold office furniture.

That was until Commodore bought MOS Technologies, and with it the new 6502 CPU. Their first use of this was the CBM PET, and then the VIC-20, C64, C16 and C+4. Jack left CBM after the release of the C16 and +4 at the CES, and funded his own company Tramel Technologies, whch would later buy Atari.

CBM bought The Amiga, and invested millions to keep the project alive. The machine debued in June 1985, but failed to get much attention.

CBM relaunched the Amiga in 1897 with the A500 and A2000, and this was enough to beat sales of similar 16-bit machines, and put pressure on Atari. A series of expensive futuristic R&D projects were scrapped, leaving only the A1200 and A4000 by 1992. A CD based console was released in 1993.

Commodore was sold in 1994 to German PC manufacturer ESCOM, who then sold the name to GateWay. Amiga Technologies existed for a while under Bill McEwan, but eventually collapsed due to dwindling support and a lack of new hardware. The Amiga trademarks floated around several companies, but were eventually purchased by Cloanto.

It is unknown who owns the Commodore brand name.