Commodore founder Jack Tramiel passes away

Jack Tramiel, one of the founding fathers of the modern games industry, has passed away at the age of 83.

He was best known to many in the industry for the role he played in launching two key pieces of gaming hardware in the 1980s.

In the early 1950s Tramiel founded Commodore, which after making its name for itself by manufacturing a range of typewriters and calculators later went on to launch the Commodore 64 under his stewardship.

Tramiel didn’t stop there, however. After leaving Commodore in 1984 he founded Tramel Technology which went on to acquire Atari’s computer division.

Under him Atari went on to launch a number of games machines such as the Atari ST, handheld machine the Atari Lynx and finally the ill-fated Atari Jaguar.

Tramiel was a survivor of the holocaust having grown up in Poland in WWII and was for a period held at Auschwitz.