“H.I.S.-tory” by Vince Ciotti

© 2011 H.I.S. Professionals, LLC

Episode # 49:

Sad Obit of a “Micro” Hero:

Jack Tramiel

We Interrupt this Story…• This week was to be Part 3 of the story of MedTake, a pioneering

micro system that introduced bedside computing for nurses...• But in the news this morning (April 12th, 2012) was the sad

obituary of a microcomputer pioneer, Jack Tramiel, famous CEO of two early microcomputer giants that rivaled Apple back then:

• Jack founded Commodore, that sold 20M model “64”s,

• And saved Atari after it was losing out to Nintendo…

• Although little or nothing to do with healthcare, since we’re on the subject of microcomputers and with the recent passing of Steve Jobs, I thought it worthwhile to recount Jack’s amazing success story, both his incredibly inspiring personal life, as well as his ruthless management style that sheds light on vendor CEOs.

Another Silicon Valley Kid?• So did Jack Tramiel start

out as another Silicon Valley kid like Microsoft’s:– Bill Gates & – Paul Allen

• Or their early & dominant competitors at Apple:– Steve Jobs &– Steve Wozniak?

Brutal Youthful Experience• Hardly! Jack was born in 1929 in Lodz Poland, and

at the age of 10 he watched the Nazi’s invasion.• As an impressionable youth, he was fascinated by

the Wehrmacht Panzers rolling through town:– “It was a fantastic thing” he later recalled.

• But the fantasy soon turned to terror as he and his parents were later interred in Auschwitz.

• The young Jack was personally examined by Joseph Mengele, the “angel of death,” and his father perished within a few months from Nazi “experiments” involving injection of lethal substances.

• However, Jack did survive, and after the war he took a series of odd jobs, learning English from watching American movies: “I figured I could handle just about anything" given the camp

experiences.  "60 individuals (lived) from 10-thousand people. I was one of those 60. So from there on nothing was difficult to me."

International Business Machines• He learned his mother also had not perished in the camps and he

met her again in Lodz. In 1947, he married another camp survivor, Helen Goldgrub, and they soon emigrated to the US.

• He joined the US Army in 1948 and repaired mechanical (no electronical then…) office equipment in the New York City area.

• "At the same time I attended an IBM School for Office Technology. It was also there where I learnt to repair electric typewriters."

• After 4 years in the Army, he took a job for just $50 a week in a downtrodden typewriter repair shop. He worked Army connections to secure a service contract but didn’t get a raise or a bonus in return.

• "I have no intention of working for people who had no brains" he told his boss on his way out the door!

• He and an army buddy started their own typewriter company in the Bronx with a $25,000 bank loan.

Commodore’s Canadian Roots• With his international roots, it was no surprise that Jack left the

fiercely competitive NYC/US market for a smaller neighbor:– “It was no large step to move to Toronto (in 1954) with my activities later on.

I thought that in a country smaller than the US my chances would be bigger...

• What’s in a name? Fascinating how he came up with Commodore:– "We bought the (typewriter) parts in Czech and assembled them in Canada...

But we still had no name for our company. One day while… in Berlin driving in a taxi, we discussed some probable names – and suddenly I saw a car with Commodore on it, and because our favourite names General and Admiral were already in use, we named our typewriters Commodore.”

• (I promise a future HIS-tory episode on neat HIS product names!)• He next expanded into the manufacture of adding machines, which were then going electronic (e.g.; TI)• To get his own chip, he contracted with a firm in Norristown, PA, right next door to SMS’ home town of Bridgeport (1969 –71, just before King of Prussia)!

MOS Technologies, Inc.• In August of 1974, eight Motorola employees including Bill

Mensch and Chuck Peddle started MOS Technologies Inc.– Motorola was Apple’s chip of choice for its early years…

• In June of 1975 MOS announced the MC6501 microcomputer chip for $20 and soon after the MC6502 for $25. This was truly breakthrough pricing; the Intel 8080 costs about$150, which was the chip of choice for the IBM PC & its world of clones. In 1976,

• MOS announced the KIM-1 with 1-MHz 6502 CPU and 1 KB of RAM for $245.- MOS tried to sell the 6502 chip to Apple, but Jobs did not offer enough.

• Later that year, Tramiel buys MOS Technologies for $60 Million so that it can be a completely self-contained company, making its own chips

“PET” Peeve• Announced at the 1977 Consumer Electronics Show, Commodore’s

PET (Personal Electronic Transactor) was a breakthrough home/ personal computer designed as an all-in-one assembly, with a combined CRT, floppy drive and keyboard, much like the original Apple Lisa & Macintosh. It marked Commodore’s abandonment of calculators for PCs, and offered then-impressive capabilities:

• Commodore’s (ex- MOS) 6502 processor with either 4 or 8 kilobytes of 8-bit RAM.

• A built-in monochrome monitor (no color in PC monitors until IBM’s 1982 PC), with 40 by 25 character graphics (less than most cell phone screens have today!)

• A built-in cassette recorder for storage (no floppy disks in those early PC days)

Other Commodore Stars• The PET sold so well that Commodore

soon followed up with 2 equal hits:– The Commodore 64, pictured at

right, which sold a staggering 20 million units, roughly 40% of the US market at the time. It introduce (hooked?) millions of teenagers to computer games, including me and my son whose gaming addiction runs well into 2012…

• Like the early Osborne portable (Phil Kline had one at McAuto!), Commodore also took a stab at a portable 64 with device on the left, which didn’t sell nearly as well, just as Apple’s early portable blunderbuss.

Commodore’s Loss, Atari’s Gain!• However, Jack Tramiel fell out with his Canadian chairman and

major shareholder Irving Gould, who had finance the MOS Technology takeover. There was quite a stink at the time about shady financial dealings (unlike our HIS vendor CEOs today, none of whom would ever be guilty of such shenanigans, right?)

• Tramiel left Commodore, and bought Atari's loss-making consumer business from Warner Bros, and started competing against his old company. The first result was a cheap line of Atari 8-bit machines, including the 520ST, known as the “Jackintosh,” pictured below. It was faster & cheaper than the early Mac…

• However, all these non-Intel machines died a series of slow deaths by the 90s when the IBM PC and its myriad of clones running DOS had totally dominated the market. Even Apple tanked so badly Jobs left in the mid-90s. Commodore declared bankruptcy in 1994, and Atari in 1995.

Jack Tramiel’s Personal Side• Press reports contain numerous stories of Jack’s

“ruthless” internal management style, pushing subordinates to the breaking point, screaming at some for days, and almost terrorizing his VPs…

• If you read Steve Job’s bio, and inside stories of Bill Gates tirades (e.g.: “MicroSerfs” – a book I highly recommend to understand the psyche of programming geeks), such styles are nothing new

• We tend to place tech firm CEOs on pedestals, giving them (too) much credit for the hard work of the hundreds of unsung heroes among the rank and file who do the true heavy lifting day-to-day.

• I’ve been privileged to work with the best of them: like Macaleer at SMS, Barlow at McAuto, and met many more during our 25 years of consulting for hospitals, and have concluded they are all as human as you and I, with the same foibles & quirks as any woman.

Requiescat In Pace• Yes, it’s sad to lose these early computer heroes as the years roll by

and the IT world enters its 66th year, since the ENIAC in Philly in 1945.• We owe CEOs respect for their amazing accomplishments primarily as

leaders, able to herd the brilliant “cats” (as beatniks used the term in the 50s!) in programming, marketing and many other departments.

• No, they aren’t the smartest people in the world, nor amazing engineers creating and assembling chips in a micro-world, nor programmers laboring in logical labyrinths in code… They’re people.

• Think of your hospital’s CEO: juggling Board members, medical staffs, impossible finances, unions, malpractice insurance, ancillary depts, hundreds (thousands?) of RNs, new buildings, regs… now that’s a tough job!

• So let’s remember their passing, taking pride in our industry that has come to dominate so much of human life today, and all within our own very short lifetimes!