The Commodore Logo: A brief history
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...
Commodore International Historical Society Blog
The History of the Commodore ChessMate
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...
Commodore’s Unreleased C64 Game Machine
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...
Commodore’s History in the Adding Machine Business
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 very first “production” PET to come off the line
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...
Paper plots of Commodore chip layouts
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...
Commodore internal org charts and phone lists
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 Fisher memories
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 Early Expansion to the United States
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 for the Commodore 64
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...
The Commodore DryCopy Thermographic copying machine
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...