petscii.nwTHE COMMODORE BBS
Jack Tramiel
IN MEMORY

Jack Tramiel

December 13, 1928 – April 8, 2012

Founder of Commodore. Survivor.

“Computers for the masses, not the classes.”
  1. 1928

    Łódź

    He was born Idek Trzmiel into a Jewish family in Łódź, Poland. When Germany invaded in 1939, his family was forced into the Łódź ghetto, where as a boy he worked in a garment factory. When the ghetto was emptied they were sent to Auschwitz. He and his father were picked for labor and sent to Ahlem, a camp near Hanover. His father did not survive it.

  2. 1945

    Liberation

    In April 1945 soldiers of the U.S. Army's 84th Infantry Division freed the camp. Decades later he helped found the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, which opened in 1993, and had words carved on one of its walls for one of those soldiers, Vernon Tott: "To Vernon W. Tott, My Liberator and Hero."

  3. 1947

    America

    He came to the United States in November 1947, married Helen the same year, and joined the U.S. Army. The Army taught him to repair typewriters and office machines.

  4. 1953

    Commodore

    While driving a taxi, he bought a small office-machine repair shop in the Bronx. He wanted a military name for it; Admiral and General were already taken, so he chose Commodore. Typewriters led to adding machines, adding machines to calculators, and calculators to buying MOS Technology, the chip maker behind the 6502.

  5. 1977

    The machines

    When his engineer Chuck Peddle told him computers were the future, he said to build one and prove it. That became the PET. Then came the VIC-20, the first computer to sell a million units, and in 1982 the Commodore 64, the best-selling single computer model of all time. That same year, when Time named the computer its "Machine of the Year", he was one of six people it featured. His rule was to build them so everyone could own one.

  6. 1984

    After Commodore

    He left Commodore in January 1984. Within months he had bought Atari's computer and game business and built the Atari ST.

  7. 2012

    "I live in the future."

    He was once asked how he carried the memory of Auschwitz. That was his answer. He retired in 1996 and died on April 8, 2012, at 83.

Every Commodore on this board, and every call to it, starts with him.