Jack Tramiel

   

Born	Jacek Trzmiel December 13, 1928 Łódź, Poland
Died	April 8, 2012 (aged 83)[1] Stanford Hospital, California, USA[2]
Known for	Commodore founder; Atari Corporation founder and CEO
Spouse(s)	Helen (m. 1947)
Children	3

Jack Tramiel

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Jack Tramiel (/trəˈmɛl/ trə-mel; Polish: Jacek Trzmiel; December 13, 1928 – April 8, 2012) was a Polish-born American businessman, best known for founding Commodore International.^[3] The Commodore PET, Commodore VIC-20 and Commodore 64 are some home computers produced while he was running the company. Tramiel later formed Atari Corporation after he purchased the remnants of the original Atari, Inc. from its parent company.

Early years[edit]

Tramiel was born as Jacek Trzmiel into a Jewish family.

After the German invasion of Poland in 1939 his family was transported by German occupiers to the Jewish ghetto in Łódź, where he worked in a garment factory. When the ghettos were liquidated his family was sent to theAuschwitz concentration camp. He was examined by Josef Mengele and selected for a work party, after which he and his father were sent to the labor camp Ahlem near Hanover, while his mother remained at Auschwitz. Like many other inmates, his father was reported to have died of typhus in the work camp; however, Tramiel believed he was killed by an injection of gasoline. Tramiel was rescued from the labor camp in April 1945 by the 84th Infantry Division.

In November 1947, Tramiel emigrated to the United States. He soon joined the U.S. Army, where he learned how to repair office equipment, including typewriters.

Commodore[edit]

Main article: Commodore International

Typewriters and calculators[edit]

In 1953, while working as a taxi driver, Tramiel bought a shop in the Bronx to repair office machinery,^[4] securing a $25,000 loan for the business from a U.S. Army entitlement.^[5] He named it Commodore Portable Typewriter.

In 1955, Tramiel signed a deal with a Czechoslovak company to assemble and sell their typewriters in North America. However, as Czechoslovakia was part of the Warsaw Pact, they could not be imported directly into the U.S., so Tramiel set up Commodore Business Machines in Toronto, Canada.^[4] Tramiel wanted a military-style name for his company, but names such as Admiral and General were already taken, so he settled on the Commodore name.^[6]

In 1962, Commodore went public, but the arrival of Japanese typewriters in the U.S. market made the selling of Czechoslovakian typewriters unprofitable. Struggling for cash, the company sold 17% of its stock to Canadian businessmanIrving Gould, taking in $400,000.^[4] It used the money to re-launch the company in the adding machine business,^[7] which was profitable for a time before the Japanese entered that field as well. Stung twice by the same source, Gould suggested that Tramiel travel to Japan to learn why they were able to outcompete North Americans in their own local markets. It was during this trip that Tramiel saw the first digital calculators, and decided that the mechanical adding machine was a dead end.^[8]

When Commodore released its first calculators, combining an LED display from Bowmar and an integrated circuit fromTexas Instruments (TI), it found a ready market. However, after slowly realizing the size of the market, TI decided to cut Commodore out of the middle, and released their own calculators at a price point below Commodore's cost of just the chips. Gould once again rescued the company, injecting another $3 million, which allowed Commodore to purchase MOS Technology, Inc. an IC design and semiconductor manufacturer, a company which had also supplied Commodore with calculator ICs.^[8] When their lead designer, Chuck Peddle, told Tramiel that calculators were a dead end and computers were the future, Tramiel told him to build one to prove the point.

Home computers[edit]

Peddle responded with the Commodore PET, based on his company's MOS Technology 6502 processor. It was first shown, privately, at the Chicago Consumer Electronics Show in 1977, and soon the company was receiving 50 calls a day from dealers wanting to sell the computer.^[8] The PET became a success—especially in the education field, where its all-in-one design was a major advantage. Much of their success with the PET came from the business decision to sell directly to large customers, instead of selling to them through a dealer network. The first PET computers were sold primarily in Europe, where Commodore had also introduced the first wave of digital handheld calculators.^[8]

As prices dropped and the market matured, the monochrome (green text on black screen) PET was at a disadvantage in the market when compared to machines like the Apple II and Atari 800, which offered color graphics and could be hooked to a television as an inexpensive display. Commodore responded with the VIC-20, and then the Commodore 64, which became the best-selling home computer of all time.^{[citation needed]} The Commodore VIC-20 was the first computer to sell one million units. The Commodore 64 sold several million units. It was during this time that Tramiel coined the phrase, "We need to build computers for the masses, not the classes."^[9]

Departure[edit]

Gould had controlled the company since 1966. He and Tramiel often argued, but Gould usually let Tramiel run Commodore by himself. Tramiel was a micromanager who did not believe in budgets; he approved every expense greater than $1,000, which meant that operations stopped when Tramiel went on vacation.^[10] Adam Osborne wrote in 1981:^[11]

The microcomputer industry abounds with horror stories describing the way Commodore treats its dealers and its customers. However, Jack Tramiel has built a large and profitable organization by offering a capable product. Tramiel definitely plays hardball, but he deserves credit for what he has been able to accomplish.

Tramiel angrily left a 13 January 1984 meeting of Commodore's board of directors led by chairman Gould, and never returned to the company. What happened at the meeting remains unclear.^[10] Neil Harris, editor of Commodore Magazineat the time, recalled:

Well, came that fateful C.E.S. show in January of '84 — a very strange press conference. Jack Tramiel got on stage in front of a whole ballroom full of press people to make the announcement that in the calendar year of 1983 Commodore had sold more than a billion dollars worth of products. Just phenomenal. In three years the company had grown from under $100 million to over a billion dollar corporation. Just unbelievable growth. A success story. But Jack was on stage and he didn't look like a happy man, and Jack was not someone to hide his emotions generally — it just seemed strange for some of us in the back of the room. Three days after the show, Jack announced that he was resigning from the company. Apparently there had been some falling out between him and the chairman of the board, Irving Gould, and from that day on the company was not the same place.^[12]

In a subsequent interview, Tramiel said that he had resigned from Commodore because he disagreed with Gould "on the basic principles — how to run the company".^[13] The disagreement between Tramiel and Gould was so bitter that, after Tramiel's departure, the Commodore magazine was forbidden to state any of Tramiel's famous sayings or even mention his name.^[12] Ahoy! wrote after his departure that although Tramiel's "obsession with controlling the cost of every phase of the manufacturing process" had led to record profits during the home computer price war, his "inflexible one-man rule" had resulted in poor dealer relations and "a steady turnover of top executives at Commodore". The magazine concluded "it has become increasingly clear that the company is just too big for one man, however talented, to run".^[14]

Atari[edit]

Main article: Atari Corporation

After a short break from the computer industry, he formed a new company named Tramel Technology, Ltd., in order to design and sell a next-generation home computer.^[15] The company was named "Tramel" to help ensure that it would be pronounced correctly (i.e., "tra - mel" instead of "tra - meal").^[16]

In July 1984, Tramel Technology bought the Consumer Division of Atari Inc. from Warner Communications.^[15] The division had fallen on hard times, due to the video game crash of 1983. TTL was then renamed Atari Corporation, and went on to produce the 16-bit Atari ST computer line based on Motorola’s MC68000 CPU, directly competing with Apple, which also used it.

Despite successfully shipping the ST, Tramiel's poor personal reputation hurt Atari. One retailer said in 1985 about the ST that because of its prior experience with Tramiel "Our interest in Atari is zero, zilch".^[17] A software company executive said "Dealing with Commodore was like dealing with Attila the Hun. I don't know if Tramiel will be following his old habits ... I don't see a lot of people rushing to get software on the machine."^[18] Another executive was more positive, stating "Jack Tramiel is a winner. I wouldn't bet against him."^[19] In the late 1980s, Tramiel decided to step away from day-to-day operations at Atari, naming his son, Sam, President and CEO. In 1995, Sam suffered a heart attack, and his father returned to oversee operations. In 1996, Tramiel sold Atari to disk-drive manufacturer Jugi Tandon Storage in a reverse merger deal. The newly merged company was named JTS Corporation, and Tramiel joined the JTS board.

Later years[edit]

Tramiel was a co-founder of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, which was opened in 1993. He was among many other survivors of the Ahlem labor camp who tracked down U.S. Army veteran Vernon Tott, who was among the 84th Division which rescued survivors from the camp and had taken and kept photographs of at least 16 of the survivors in storage until 2003. Tott, who died of cancer in 2003, was personally commemorated by Tramiel with an inscription on one of the Holocaust Museum's walls saying "To Vernon W. Tott, My Liberator and Hero".^[20]

Tramiel died on April 8, 2012, of heart failure at the age of 83.^[21]

References[edit]

1. Jump up^ Computer Legend and Gaming Pioneer Jack Tramiel Dies at Age 83, 2012/04/09, By Dave Thier, Forbes
2. Jump up^ "Commodore founder Jack Tramiel dead at 83" from Computerworld
3. Jump up^ Terdiman, Daniel. "Woz, meet Jack Tramiel". CNET Networks, Inc. Retrieved 2008-09-28.
4. ^ Jump up to:^a b c "Chronological History of Commodore Computer". Up & Running Technologies Incorporated. Retrieved 2008-09-28.
5. Jump up^ "You Don't Know Jack!". Running. Retrieved 2008-09-28.
6. Jump up^ Del Conte, Natali (1994-03-29). "As Commodore 64 Turns 25, Founders Reminisce". www.pcmag.com. Retrieved 2007-12-14.
7. Jump up^ In 1962, he bought Feiler, a German company producing adding machines (see Early history of Jack Tramiels-Commodore)
8. ^ Jump up to:^a b c d "Early Commodore History!". Running. Retrieved 2010-03-15.
9. Jump up^ "Gamer Decades: The 1980s", IGN
10. ^ Jump up to:^a b Maher, Jimmy (2013-07-28). "A Computer for Every Home?". The Digital Antiquarian. Retrieved 10 July 2014.
11. Jump up^ Osborne, Adam (1981-04-13). "The Portable Osborne". InfoWorld. pp. 42–43. Retrieved 1 January 2015.
12. ^ Jump up to:^a b Herzog, Marty (January 1988). "Neil Harris". Comics Interview (54) (Fictioneer Books). pp. 41–51.
13. Jump up^ (1985). Jack Tramiel Interview on YouTube
14. Jump up^ Leeman, Sheldon (May 1984). "The Future of Commodore?". Ahoy!. p. 44. Retrieved 27 June 2014.
15. ^ Jump up to:^a b "Time Warner Companies Inc, et al. · SC 13D/A". www.secinfo.com. 1994-03-29. Retrieved 2007-12-06.
16. Jump up^ Takahashi, Dean. "A few words with Jack Tramiel and the Commodore 64 gang". Media News Group. Retrieved 2008-09-28.
17. Jump up^ Maremaa, Tom (1985-06-03). "Atari Ships New 520 ST". InfoWorld. p. 23. Retrieved 19 July 2014.
18. Jump up^ Chin, Kathy (1985-01-28). "Atari Promises Software For ST". InfoWorld (IDG). p. 17. Retrieved 2011-03-19.
19. Jump up^ Sanger, David E. (1985-05-13). "Atari is Facing New Doubts". The New York Times. Retrieved 5 January 2015.
20. Jump up^ Susan Stamberg (September 25, 2007). "Holocaust Survivors Honor Camp Liberator". NPR.
21. Jump up^ Douglas Martin (April 10, 2012). "Jack Tramiel, a pioneer in computers, dies at 83".