Drawing from a number of sources including Brian Bagnall’s Commodore: A Company on the Edge, internal documents provided by Michael Tomczyk, various discussions in the Commodore International Historical Society Facebook group, and a litany...
Commodore historians are perhaps fortunate that in the earliest years of the company, Commodore ran somewhat afoul of the authorities due to their relationship with the Atlantic Acceptance Corporation. Atlantic Acceptance was a Canadian...
If you’ve ever been curious about the origins of or the meaning of the world famous Commodore logo, often referred to as the “chicken lips” logo, wonder no more. I put together a short...
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...
