| Jack Tramiel |
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PRE-COMPUTER DAYS Tramiel was born in 1928 in Łódź , Poland , as Idek Trzmiel. After the Nazi invasion in 1939 his family was transported to the Jewish Ghetto in Łódź, where he worked in a pants factory. When the ghettos were liquidated his family was sent to the Auschwitz Concentration Camp . He was examined by Dr. Mengele and selected for a work party, after which he and his father were sent to the work camp Alum near Hanover , while his mother remained at Auschwitz. The Nazis claim his father died of Typhus in the work camp like many other inmates, although Tramiel believes he was killed by an injection of Gasoline . Tramiel was rescued in April 1945 by the U.S. Army . In November of 1947 , Tramiel emigrated to the United States and soon joined the army. In the army he learned how to repair office equipment, including Typewriter s. In 1953 , while working as a Taxi driver, he bought a shop in Bronx to repair office machinery, and named it Commodore Portable Typewriter. He then later started a business importing typewriters from Europe, and in 1955 , to circumvent import restrictions, he set up '''Commodore Business Machines''' in Toronto . Tramiel wanted a military-style name for his company, but names like Admiral and General were already taken, so he settled on the Commodore name. In 1962 , Commodore went public. During the 1960s the Japanese started producing low-cost typewriters and Commodore could no longer compete in that market. He then turned to Adding Machine s, but it was not long before the Japanese were entering this business as well. Commodore's main investor, Irving Gould , sent Tramiel to Japan to learn ways to compete, but when he returned he had a different idea instead. CALCULATORS In 1970 he started work on electronic Calculator s, and in the early 1970s Commodore became a major supplier of calculators based on a Texas Instruments Chip-set . In 1975 TI decided to take over the market, and started producing their own complete calculators which sold at a cost lower than the price of the chip-set alone. This drove most manufacturers out of business, but by this time Commodore had enough of a War Chest to survive. Tramiel started looking for a Chip producer to buy, thereby guaranteeing a supply of chips in the future. The obvious solution was MOS Technology , a small company in Pennsylvania that had been set up as a second-source of the TI chips, and was currently struggling with cash-flow problems. MOS was bought in 1976 , becoming a part of Commodore. MICROCOMPUTER BUSINESS One of the Engineer s at MOS was Chuck Peddle , the man who had designed the ground-breaking 6502 chip. Peddle convinced Tramiel that the calculator was a dead-end as a product, that the computer would take over, and that the 6502 was the first in line for success. Peddle showed him a "test system" using the 6502, the KIM-1 , and while Tramiel was interested he demanded that it be put into an all-in-one form in time for the COMDEX in six months. Combining the KIM with a new display driver chip, 4kB of RAM , a version of Microsoft 's BASIC Programming Language , and an all-in-one case including a monitor and Cassette Tape drive for storage resulted in the PET 2001 . At $599, it became a hit, notably in schools where its tough construction was a major advantage over technically superior machines like the Apple II and Atari 8-bit Family , which came out a year later. THE COMMODORE 64 Although Peddle left the company in 1980, improvements were made to the platform. In 1980 a new Graphics Chip with basic color output and a RF Modulator for Television display produced the Commodore VIC 20 , which became a huge seller. In 1982 , another new Graphics Chip , a new state-of-the-art sound chip and 64K of RAM resulted in the Commodore 64 (C64), which was an even bigger seller and went on to become the most sold Home Computer in history, with about 22 million units shipped. In 1984 , its sales surpassed US $1 billion. The success of the C64 was based on a massive manufacturing effort that cost a huge amount of money to set up — borrowed money that should have been easy to pay off in profits on the sales. However, Texas Instruments entered the market, and it appears that Tramiel was so upset about their earlier dealings in the calculator market that he decided to kill them in this one. Publicly declaring "Business is war", he started a Price War , with the C64 quickly dropping from $595 to $199. While sales continued to skyrocket, profits plummeted, and Commodore's cash flow along with it. It seemed Commodore would soon be in command of a market worth nothing. RESIGNATION FROM COMMODORE By late 1983 with the company was on the verge of bankruptcy, Tramiel and the Board of Directors argued over the direction of the company, which resulted in Tramiel resigning, and several Tramiel loyalists quit Commodore in protest. Tramiel and his sons Sam and Leonard formed a new company named Tramel Technologies, Ltd., in order to design and sell a next-generation home computer. (According to Leonard Tramiel, "Our name Tramiel was constantly being mispronounced as "Tra-meal" and my dad hoped that the other spelling would get people to say "Tra-mell" (it rhymes with "done well"). It didn't work."). ATARI Meanwhile, Warner Communications was wanting to get out of the home video game business, as its Atari division had fell on hard times due to the Great Video Game Crash Of 1983 . Warner Communications called Garry Tramiel (at the time a stock broker at Merrill Lynch ) and asked if his father would be interested in purchasing Atari. On July 3 , 1984 , TTL (Tramel Technologies, Ltd.) bought the home consumer division of Atari (the home consumer division consisted of the Atari 400/800/XL computer line and the Atari home video game line). Garry Tramiel later left Merrill Lynch to join his father and his older brothers (Sam and Leonard) at the new Atari. The transaction included the "Atari" name and "Fuji" logo, along with intangible property rights (patents, trademarks, and copyrights) owned by Atari in conjunction with its computer and video game businesses, all for exclusive use in all areas other than coin-operated video game use. The Atari arcade division was not part of this deal. Warner Communications retained this division and renamed it Atari Games . Warner received no cash, but received US$240 million in long-term notes and warrants for a 32 percent interest in Tramiel's new venture. Tramiel, in return, received warrants giving him the right to purchase one million shares of Warner common stock at US$22 a share. The Tramiels immediately canned all video game projects (including the Atari 7800, which had just been released in test markets in the Los Angeles area a month prior, and the Atari 2600 Jr., the cost-reduced redesign of the Atari 2600 VCS), slashed the prices of the 16K Atari 600XL (to $49.99) and the 64K Atari 800XL (to $99.99), fired 90% of Atari's workforce, and re-invented Atari as a home computer company. Atari, Inc. (Atari's official name under Warner ownership) originally planned was to purchase the rights to Jay Miner's 16-bit Amiga chipset design for use by Atari in next-generation 16-bit home computers and a future 16-bit home video game system. When Tramiel purchased Atari, Commodore stepped in and bought the Amiga technology outright. The Tramiel-owned Atari decided to create their own 16-bit home computer. The Atari ST debuted at the 1985 Winter Consumer Electronics Show to good reviews. The ST line officially hit store shelves later in 1985. LATE 1980S TO THE PRESENT DAY In the late 1980s, Tramiel decided to step away from day-to-day operations at Atari and named his eldest son Sam the new President and CEO of Atari. By 1993, Atari had released its 64-bit Jaguar video game system, which initially sold well, but sales quickly turned southward. Sam remained as President and CEO until he suffered a mild heart attack in late-1995. Jack Tramiel came back to run the company, but as the company was losing millions of dollar a year, he knew that Atari was dying, and decided to sell Atari to disk-drive manufacturer Jugi Tandon Storage , aka JTS Corporation, in a Reverse Merger deal, with Jack on the JTS board. Jack Tramiel is now retired and living in Monte Sereno, California , with his wife Helen, who he married in 1947 shortly after his immigration from Poland. They have three sons (Sam, Leonard, and Garry) and several grandchildren. Tramiel has a large Gold and Stainless Steel Sword from Atari's SwordQuest contest in his living room. It was not awarded to a player due to the company's sale and an apparent lack of interest among gamers and corporate staff. The sword was part of an elaborate Video Game contest of multiple golden and gemstoned prizes worth several thousand U.S. dollars; the sword itself when created was worth $50,000. It is rumored that Tramiel also possesses what would have been the grand prizes from ''Swordquest : Waterworld'' (the golden "Crown of Life") and ''Swordquest : Airworld'' (the "Philosopher's Stone", a large opal). The acronym TOS (the most common operating system for the ST series), is erroneously thought by some to stand for "Tramiel Operating System". EXTERNAL LINKS
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