Computer Shopper - UK (2019-12)

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RETRO

ISSUE 382|COMPUTER SHOPPER|DECEMBER 2019

housing upto 163,777 residents. Hisfather

repaired shoesto earn just about enoughto

provideforafamily now living inasingle

room. In 1944, however,the Nazis liquidated

the ghettoand began deporting inhabitantsto

the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp.

Tramiel and his parents were examinedby

the notorious SSofficer Dr JosefMengele,

who decidedto send the 17-year-old and his

father to the labour camp Ahlem, built on a

hill overlooking Hanover.The prisoners were

forced to construct an underground tunnelto

house the operationsof the Continental

Gummi-Werke AG rubber factory ,asw ell as

that of the tank company Maschinenfabrik

Niedersachsen Hannover.Tramiel would later

sayhew atched hisfather die when guards

injected him with petrol.

Fortunately,his mother,who had

been told to remain in Auschwitz-

Birkenau, survived, but the painof

those years–and the deathof

many relatives–lay heavy .Tramiel

and the prisoners had beenforced to dig their

own gravestowards the endof the war and

theywere thankfully liberated in the nickof

time by the UnitedStates army in April 1945.

By then theteenager’s weight had plummeted

to just five stone but he recovered, married

Bergen-Belsen survivor Helen Goldgrub and

the pair emigratedto the US,acountry to

which hefelt indebtedforsetting them free.

Tramiel joined the US army and maintained

official equipment and typewriters. Upon

leaving in 1952, he usedaGIl oan of $25,000

to fo und arepair shop called the Commodore

Portable Typewriter Company while also

working asataxi driver.When he signed a

deal to assemble and sell typewritersfora

Czechoslovaktypewriter company called

Zbrojovka Brno NP,hem oved to

Torontotog et aroundWarsaw Pact

restrictions. It resulted in Commodore

Business Machines beingformed in

1955 and,followingaspell selling

adding machines and pocket

calculators,Tramiel was persuadedto

try his hand with home computers.

TEXASHOLD-UP

It was, in truth,anecessary step.Just as

Japanese manufacturers had eaten awayat

the typewriter market and begun producing

less expensive adding machines, now

Commodore was being held outto dry by

Texas Instruments(TI), which had provided

⬆Launched in 1977,the Commodore PET was the company’s first mass-market personal computer

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➡Commodore wasamajor producerof

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Image: ©Raimond Spekking