Jack Tramiel: The Commodore Founder Who Bought Atari for Revenge

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Jack Tramiel started in a Bronx typewriter repair shop in the early 1950s and ended up selling the best selling computer of the 1980s. Along the way his company, Commodore, was nearly destroyed twice by people it depended on: first when its financier Atlantic Acceptance collapsed in a fraud scandal in 1965, then when Texas Instruments began selling finished calculators for less than it charged Commodore for the chips inside them. Tramiel drew one lesson from both: own everything, trust no one.

This episode follows how that lesson shaped the home computer market. In 1976 Commodore bought the chip maker MOS Technology, and with it engineer Chuck Peddle and his 6502 processor. The PET, the VIC-20, and the Commodore 64 followed, sold in Kmart like appliances and priced to bleed rivals dry. Then, at the height of the company's success in January 1984, Tramiel resigned after a clash with chairman Irving Gould, bought Atari's consumer division, and turned on the empire he had built.

• To survive the Atlantic Acceptance collapse, Tramiel took a bridge loan against his German plant and gave Irving Gould nearly 18 percent of the company for half a million dollars in 1966.
• The VIC-20, promoted in television ads by William Shatner, became the first computer to sell over a million units.
• Because Commodore made its own chips, Tramiel could cut the Commodore 64 to under $200 in the 1983 price war, and Texas Instruments left the home computer market.
• After Commodore sued him over trade secrets, his team found an old development contract between Atari and Amiga and countersued to block Commodore from using the Amiga technology it had just bought.
• The Atari ST, nicknamed the Jackintosh, fought the Amiga through the 16 bit era. Commodore went bankrupt and was liquidated in 1994.