Improbable PC pioneer

The PC industry is so young that a remarkable percentage of its most significant figures are still with us. But it lost a key one on Sunday when Jack Tramiel, the founder of Commodore, died at 83. Commodore was one of the first important PC companies, and Tramiel, in his own idiosyncratic manner, played a vital role in getting the PC revolution underway.

The PET 2001 (1977)

Along with the Apple II and Radio Shack’s TRS-80, both of which were also introduced in 1977, the PET was one of the holy trinity of microcomputers that turned the PC from a nerdy hobbyist gizmo into a consumer product.

The Commodore 64 (1982)

The PET was an important early computer, but the machine that Tramiel will be forever associated with is the Commodore 64. It was introduced in 1982, offered a crazy-generous 64KB of memory for a surprisingly low $595 and became one of the most popular computers in history. Wikipedia still says it’s the single best-selling PC model of all time; I think it’s possible that it no longer retains that honor, depending on how you define “PC” and “model.”

He was, essentially, the anti-Steve Jobs: he wanted PCs to be very cheap and very utilitarian, and didn’t care in the slightest about elegance or technical sophistication. The C64 was cheap, utilitarian and inelegant — and for a good long while, that was a recipe for huge success. The rest of the industry was forced to slash prices to compete with Commodore, a trend that got PCs into lots of homes just when the idea of a PC in the home was getting exciting. (It also drove companies such as TI right out of the market.)

I bought a TI computer the Sunday that the Jets were playing in a playoff game, with Richard Todd as quarterback (1981).

Built DEC into a power

A pioneer in computing, but short-sighted when it came to personal computers.


Ken Olsen helped reshape the computer industry as a founder of the Digital Equipment Corporation, at one time the world’s second-largest computer company ... built Digital on $70,000 in seed money, founding it with a partner in 1957 in the small Boston suburb of Maynard, Mass. With Mr. Olsen as its chief executive, it grew to employ more than 120,000 people at operations in more than 95 countries, surpassed in size only by I.B.M. At its peak, in the late 1980s, Digital had $14 billion in sales and ranked among the most profitable companies in the nation. But its fortunes soon declined after Digital began missing out on some critical market shifts, particularly toward the personal computer. Mr. Olsen was criticized as autocratic and resistant to new trends. “The personal computer will fall flat on its face in business,” he said at one point