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Tramiel was born in 1928 in Lodz, Poland, as Idek Trzmiel. After the Nazi invasion in 1939 his family was transported to the Jewish ghetto in Lodz, 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, and he and his father were sent to the work camp Alum near Hanover, while his mother remained at Auschwitz. His father was later killed after being injected with gasoline for expermintation purposes. Tramiel was rescued in April 1945 by the US Army.
His name was changed at ellis island when he immagrated.
In 1947, Tramiel immagrated to the United StatesThe United States of America also referred to as the United States U. America ¹ or the States is a federal republic in central North America, stretching from the Atlantic in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west. It shares land borders with Canada in and soon joined the US Army. In the army he learned how to repair office equipment, including typewriter1910, could not have seen characters as they were typed. A typewriter is a mechanical, electromechanical, or electronic device with a set of "keys" that, when pressed, cause characters to be printed on a document, usually paper. In the late 19th and the ss. In 19531953 is a common year starting on Thursday (click on link for the calendar). Events January events January 7 President Harry S. Truman announces the United States has developed a hydrogen bomb. January 13 Marshal Josip Broz Tito chosen President of Yugosl, while working as a taxiTaxi may mean: A form of public transportation: see taxicab . An American television comedy: see Taxi . The title of a number of movies The best known of which is Taxi Driver Another is Luc Besson's Taxi from 1998 A 2004 Taxi movie featured Jimmy Fallon a driver, he bought a shop in Bronx to repair office machinery, and named it Commodore Portable Typewriter. Then later started a business importing typewriters from Europe, and in 19551955 is a common year starting on Saturday. see link for calendar) Events January events January 2 Panama president Jose Antonio Remon is assassinated. January 19 The Scrabble board game debuts. February events February 8 Nikolai Bulganin ousts Georgi Mal, to circumvent import restrictions, he set up Commodore Business Machines in Toronto.
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 machines, but it was not long before the Japanese were entering this business as well. Commodore's main investor, Jack Gould, sent Tramiel to Japan to learn ways to compete, but when he returned he had a different idea instead.
In 1970 he started work on electronic calculators, 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 guarenteeing 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 stuggling with cash-flow problems. MOS was bought in 1976, becoming a part of Commodore.
One of the engineers 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.
Although Peddle left the company, improvements were made to the platform. In 1982 a new display driver with basic color output and a RF modulator for television display produced the Commodore VIC 20 , which became a huge seller. Intended to be a "upscale" version known as the VIC 64, a new display chip and more RAM resulted in the Commodore 64, which was an even bigger seller and went on to become the most popular home computer in history, with about 22 million units shipped. In 1984, the sales surpassed US $1 billion.
However 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 was also in the market, and it appears he was so upset about their earlier dealings in the calculator market that he decided to kill them in this one. He started a massive price war, with the C64 eventually selling for $199 when it was originally intended to sell for over $1000. The profits skyrocketed, Commodore's cash flow along with it. The head of the board and Jack had a huge agrument and Tramiel quit. The company was almost bankrupt by the end of 1983 and eventuallly went bankrupt after he left. Many say he could have pulled commodore out of the hole they fell into after he left.
His own personal fortune was enough that he was able to buy Atari outright. Atari, once the "golden child" of silicon valley, had been destroyed by the price war between Commodore and TI as well, and their owners, Warner Communications, was desperate to sell it off. Although it would seem to be a reasonable match, by this point the market was no longer interested in home computers, and he failed to reproduce his earlier success with the new Atari ST.
Tramiel has a large gold and stainless steel sword from a contest in his living room from Atari's Warner days when Warner Bros. owned the Franklin mint. The sword was part of an elaborate video game contest of multiple golden and gemstoned prizes worth several thousand dollars, the Sword itself when created was worth $50,000 (although the dip in the price of gold has no doubt lowered its value). The contest aruptly ended when the Tramiels took over, leaving three of the five prizes unawarded. The other two prizes are a golden crown and a jewel box, with large opal inside.