For those who grew up as the personal computer was beginning to make its first appearances in homes and classrooms, the words "Commodore 64" have special resonance.
The early version of the personal computer was fun, educational and affordable and put digital technology in the hands of many, for the very first time.
Jack Tramiel, the founder of Commodore and the man who helped popularize the personal computer, died on Sunday at the age of 83, his son Leonard Tramiel has confirmed.
"Jack Tramiel was a larger than life character whose motto was 'computers for the masses, not the classes,'" Brian Bagnall, author of "Commodore: A Company on the Edge," told CTVNews.ca.
"He was instrumental in getting computers into the hands of millions of teenagers, families on tight budgets, people on low incomes -- people who would later become famous such as (Linux inventor) Linus Torvalds, whose first computer was the VIC-20."
The Polish-born son of Jewish immigrants, Tramiel survived the Auschwitz concentration camp before moving to North America where he became an entrepreneur, inventor and businessman.
He began his career in the U.S. in the late 1940s maintaining typewriters for the U.S. army, before eventually moving to Toronto in 1955 and starting his own typewriter company, Commodore Business Machines International.
Tramiel, at the vanguard of the electronics movement, then shifted his business to California's Silicon Valley in the late 1960s and began manufacturing calculators.
He eventually launched the Commodore 64 in 1982, after first releasing the PET in 1977 and the VIC-20 in 1980. The precursors never achieved the popularity of the C64, which still qualifies as one of the most popular PCs ever made, having sold over 20 million units.
To this day, Bagnall said, Tramiel's influence is deeply felt in the computer industry.
"The millions of young people who learned their computing skills on the C64 went on to have a major impact on the computer industry, not only in Silicon Valley but worldwide. He taught the industry that the key to success is to continually lower prices while designing computers with more features every year," Bagnall said.
In 1984, Tramiel was ousted as Commodore CEO by his shareholders and went on to purchase Atari -- a company he had once mocked in ads that had William Shatner as the celebrity pitch man.
In the ad, Shatner asked parents why they would waste their money on a gaming device for their children when they could learn and have fun with a Commodore.
"Why buy just a video game from Atari or Intellivision? Invest in the wonder computer of the 1980s for under $300," Shatner says in the futuristic looking commercial.
"Unlike games it has a real computer keyboard. With the Commodore VIC-20 the whole family can learn computing at home."
Follow Andy Johnson on Twitter @ajinto
