Jack Tramiel

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Jack Tramiel (2007)

Jack Tramiel (born Jacek Trzmiel , according to other information as Idek Tramielski ; born  December 13, 1928 in Łódź , †  April 8, 2012 in Monte Sereno , California ) was a Polish-American entrepreneur and computer pioneer .

Life

Tramiel in 1944 because of his Jewish origin from the Nazis only at the Auschwitz concentration camp and then to the concentration camp Hanover-Ahlem deported, in which he as forced laborers working for the Continental Gummi-Werke had. In 1945 he was liberated by the Americans and received an auxiliary job with the US Army in Marburg . In 1947 he married the concentration camp survivor Marie Helen Goldgrub in Hanover. In November 1947 he emigrated to the USA and changed his name to Jack Tramiel. In the spring of 1948 he joined the American Army and learned how to repair various office equipment.

In 1952 he left the army and from then on also worked as an equipment technician for the army. He became an American citizen in 1953 and opened a store in the Bronx that he called the Commodore Portable Typewriter . He continued to mainly repair typewriters .

In 1954 in Toronto he founded Commodore Business Machines International (CBM), which initially focused on importing inexpensive typewriters and other office machines from Europe. It was founded in Canada to circumvent import restrictions in the USA.

The C64 in a "bread box" case

Tramiel listed Commodore on the stock exchange in 1962. In the mid-1960s, the company was on the brink of bankruptcy , but was saved from Toronto by investor lawyer Irving Gould (1919-2001). In the early 1970s, Tramiel introduced the manufacture of electronic pocket calculators at Commodore and successfully established itself in the lower price segment, which had been neglected by the main competitors Hewlett-Packard and Texas Instruments because of their pursuit of a high-quality brand image.

In 1976 he bought the young company MOS Technologies, at that time one of the most important manufacturers of microprocessors , which made Commodore largely independent of external chip manufacturers. The most important products that he launched in the company were the Commodore PET 2001 , the VC20 and the C64 . On January 13, 1984, Tramiel had to resign from Commodore because of differences of opinion with Gould. He then bought the end customer division of Atari Inc. , which at that time was in financial distress due to the video game crash .

Atari ST

Together with his three sons, Leonard, Sam and Garry Tramiel, he ran the Atari Corporation for twelve years . Then, after a few initially successful home computer systems such as the Atari ST and the unsuccessful attempt to gain a foothold (again) in the game console market with the Atari Jaguar , the Atari Corporation had to deal with the hard drive manufacturer JTS Corporation (JTS Corp. ) emergency fusion. Atari had an appreciable cash balance due to the sales proceeds from the past and won legal proceedings, but had high losses due to the unsuccessful Jaguar console and no longer a prospect of significant market shares, which would have made bankruptcy within two years inevitable. Conversely, JTS Corp had a significant share of the hard drive market, but was in acute danger of bankruptcy due to its low cash balance. Although the intention was initially announced to continue the Atari branch, the Atari branch was quickly wound up in order to increase the cash register of the JTS Corp. JTS Corp was able to survive three years before it had to file for bankruptcy.

Tramiel had already handed over the management of the Atari branch to the management of JTS Corp in the course of the merger. He then retired from professional life and lived in Monte Sereno, California until his death. He died there on Easter Sunday 2012 with his family at the age of 83.

Tramiel used his fortune to help build the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, DC

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Obituary for Commodore founder Tramiel - "Computers for the masses" . taz.de. April 10, 2012. Retrieved December 18, 2016.
  2. ↑ Never żyje Jack Tramiel - every z ojców komputera osobistego . Newsweek.pl (Polish). April 11, 2012. Retrieved December 18, 2016.
  3. ^ Congressional Record, Volume 144, Part 5, April 21, 1998 to April 30, 1998; P. 6697, see also literature. With reference to Fortune Magazine of April 13, 1998. Idek Trzemiel is sometimes also mentioned, see: History Corner . Trzmiel means “ bumblebee ” in Polish .
  4. ^ Susan Stamberg: Holocaust Survivors Honor Camp Liberator. On National Public Radio , September 25, 2007 (English). Online at npr.org, accessed December 18, 2016.
  5. ^ Elke Wittich, Boris Mayer: Game over. In: Jungle World. No. 16, April 19, 2012 (German). Online at Jungle-World.com, accessed December 21, 2016.
personal data
SURNAME Tramiel, Jack
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Trzmiel, Jacek; Tramielski, Idek
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American-Polish entrepreneur and computer pioneer
DATE OF BIRTH December 13, 1928
PLACE OF BIRTH Łódź , Poland
DATE OF DEATH April 8, 2012
Place of death Monte Sereno , California