![]() ![]() He agreed to buy MOS, which was having troubles of its own, only on the condition that its chip designer Chuck Peddle join Commodore directly as head of engineering. Commodore obtained an infusion of cash from Gould, which Tramiel used beginning in 1976 to purchase several second-source chip suppliers, including MOS Technology, Inc., in order to assure his supply. However, in 1975, Texas Instruments, the main supplier of calculator parts, entered the market directly and put out a line of machines priced at less than Commodore's cost for the parts. Commodore soon had a profitable calculator line and was one of the more popular brands in the early 1970s, producing both consumer as well as scientific/programmable calculators. In 1969, Commodore began manufacturing its own electronic calculators. Through his Japanese contacts, Tramiel saw some of the first electronic calculators in the late 1960s and pivoted from adding machines to marketing calculators produced by companies like Casio under the Commodore brand name. As part of the deal, Gould became the new chairman of the company. Commodore now owed Gould money and still did not have sufficient capital to meet its payments, so Tramiel sold 17.9% of the company to Gould in 1966 for $500,000. To extricate himself, Tramiel worked with a financier named Irving Gould, who brokered a deal to sell Wilson Stationers to an American company. Due to the financial scandal, Tramiel could only secure a bridge loan by paying interest well above the prime rate and putting the German factory up as collateral. Nevertheless, the scandal left Commodore in a bad financial position because it had borrowed heavily from Atlantic to purchase Wilson, and the loan was called in. Commodore was one of the Atlantic subsidiaries directly implicated in this scheme, but the commission was unable to find any evidence of wrongdoing on the part of Tramiel or Kapp despite heavy suspicion. Morgan then either pocketed the money or invested it in a series of unsuccessful ventures. A subsequent investigation by a royal commission revealed a massive fraud scheme in which the company falsified financial records to acquire loans funneled into a web of subsidiaries in which C. In 1965, Atlantic Acceptance collapsed when it failed to make a routine payment. That same year, the company made a deal with a Japanese manufacturer to produce adding machines for Commodore and purchased the office supply retailer Wilson Stationers to serve as an outlet for its typewriters. ![]() In 1965, it purchased the furniture company for which it served as the distributor and moved its headquarters to that company's facilities on Warden Avenue in the Scarborough district of Toronto. It purchased a factory in West Germany to manufacture its own typewriters, began distributing office furniture for a Canadian manufacturer, and sold Pearlsoud radio and stereo equipment. With the financial backing of Atlantic Acceptance, Commodore expanded rapidly in the early 1960s. In 1962, the company went public on the Montreal Stock Exchange, under the name of Commodore Business Machines (Canada), Ltd. Powell Morgan became chairman of Commodore. ![]() To bolster the company's financial condition, Tramiel and Kapp sold a portion of the company to Atlantic Acceptance Corporation, one of Canada's largest financing companies, and Atlantic President C. Commodore funded its operations through factoring over its first two years, but faced a continual cash crunch. in Toronto to sell the imported typewriters. On October 10, 1958, Tramiel and Kapp incorporated Commodore Portable Typewriter, Ltd. īy 1958, the adding machine business was slowing, but Tramiel made a connection with an Everest agent in England who alerted him to a business opportunity to import into Canada portable typewriters manufactured by a Czechoslovakian company. After acquiring a local dealership selling Everest adding machines, Tramiel convinced Everest to give him and Kapp exclusive Canadian rights to its products and established Everest Office Machines in Toronto in 1955. In 1954, they formed a partnership to sell used and reconditioned typewriters and used their profits to purchase the Singer Typewriter Company. Commodore co-founders Jack Tramiel and Manfred Kapp met in the early 1950s while both employed by the Ace Typewriter Repair Company in New York City. ![]()
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