Commodore International is one of the companies that played a crucial role in the development of the home and personal computer industry in the 1980s, but its early products were far removed from the world of computing. We will mention its history, its main products, and the legacy the company left on society.
The history of Commodore International
Commodore International is an American company based in Pennsylvania that mainly focused on electronics and hardware. Together with its subsidiary “Commodore Business Machines”, it developed, manufactured, and marketed desktop computers in the 1970s and 1980s. In 1983 the company developed and marketed the “Commodore 64” desktop computer, which became the best-selling computer worldwide.
The company was founded in 1954 under the name “Commodore Portable Typewriter Company” in Toronto, by the Polish-born Jack Tramiel, and its main manufacture was typewriters.
From 1955 the company took the name "Commodore Business Machines". But it was not until 1962 that it landed in the United States, appearing on the New York Stock Exchange under the name “Commodore International Limited”. However, the company had stopped producing typewriters (due to an invasion of Japanese machines) and decided to focus on the manufacture of calculators and cash registers. And at the end of the 1960s, Japanese products once again invaded the United States and Canada.
The policy taken by the company was to focus on the manufacture and marketing of electronic calculators. Commodore launched a line of very powerful and affordable scientific calculators.
Due to the strong competition in scientific calculators, the company began to venture into the manufacture of small computers; and in the 1970s it presented “Chessmate”, a small chess computer based on a “MOS 6504” chip.
Commodore International and computers
In 1977 the company developed and marketed the “Commodore PET (Electronic Personal Transactor)” computer, and it is here that the company fully entered the computing world and settled in Pennsylvania.
Commodore International and the 1980s
The PET equipment line was used at home, in schools, and in some offices, all thanks to its ability to share printers and disk drives in a simple local network. Commodore kept selling its PET computers, thanks to the novelty of the product and its clever and aggressive marketing campaigns such as “Buy one and take two” or “PET your master”. The consolidation of Commodore International came in 1983, with its star product “Commodore 64”, the computer sold 22 million copies by the end of that year.
Like the PET computers, Tramiel decided to carry out an aggressive marketing campaign for the “Commodore 64”, lowering prices and bringing the product to retail stores in any neighborhood. In this way, the computer was accessible to almost all social classes and could be bought in any local store.
With this strategy, Commodore International differentiated itself from Atari and Apple Computer. In 1984, due to major differences in the company's board, founder Jack Tramiel decided to resign from Commodore International (Irving Gould took his place) and founded “Amiga Corporation”. (It later became a subsidiary of Commodore.)
Commodore and society
Undoubtedly after its bankruptcy on April 29, 1994, the company's computer systems such as the C64 and Amiga series have become cult material; and far from disappearing and being forgotten (in the hands of platforms of games that use 3D graphics), fans recognize the historical value of Commodore's products and raise their flag to this day.
