Commodore International Historical Society Blog
In 1978, Commodore International Limited released the ChessMate. ChessMate was a consumer electronic chess playing device. From all outward appearances, it looked similar enough to many of the other popular consumer electronic devices of...
In 1990, Commodore released the C64GS. “GS” stood for “Games System”. It was Commodore’s attempt to have the wildly successful Commodore 64 compete in the game console market. On the surface, this doesn’t seem...
Jack Tramiel and Manfred Kapp weren’t strictly in the typewriter business even from their earliest business ventures together. Nearly all of their ventures focused on office equipment generally, rather than typewriters or adding machines...
The Personal Electronic Transactor (PET) featured here is Serial #001001, owned by Don Greenbaum, the former Treasurer of Commodore International. This was the first serial number issued by Commodore for a PET, but it’s...
As I mentioned in a previous post, Sandy Roshong Fisher worked on Commodore’s IC layout team in West Chester, PA from February, 1982 through June, 1993 when she was laid off. During that time...
Sandy Roshong Fisher saved several internal Commodore org charts and phone lists during her time with the company. Here they are shared exactly as she scanned them. Org Charts Telephone Lists
Sandy Roshong was hired by Commodore in 1982 in their IC Layout Department. She eventually married Terry Fisher, also a Commodore employee, and took his last name in marriage. This post is a simple...
Commodore’s Expansion into the United States Commodore was founded on October 10, 1958 as Commodore Portable Typewriter Company Limited in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. This post will shed some light on their early expansion into...
CP/M was an operating system written by Gary Kildall, the founder of Digital Research, Inc, in 1974 which enjoyed early widespread popularity. As early as 1979, Commodore’s VP of Marketing, Dennis Barnhart, proposed CP/M...
Commodore DryCopy In early 1962, Commodore expanded into the field of copying machines by creating two new subsidiaries: Commodore Drycopy, Inc. (New York) and Commodore Drycopy, Ltd. (Toronto). Commodore studied the three major copying...
Commodore’s history as a publicly traded company Commodore began as a legal entity on October 10, 1958 as a privately-owned company named Commodore Portable Typewriter Company Limited. A mere four years after Commodore was...