Commodore International (or Commodore International Limited) was a North American home computer and electronics manufacturer. Commodore International (CI) along with its subsidiary Commodore Business Machines (CBM) participated in the development of the home–personal computer industry in the 1970s and 1980s. The company developed and marketed one of the world's best-selling desktop computers, the Commodore 64 (1982) and released its Amiga computer line in 1985.
The company that would become Commodore Business Machines, Inc. was founded in 1954 in Toronto as the Commodore Portable Typewriter Company by Polish immigrant and Auschwitz survivor Jack Tramiel. For a few years he had been living in New York, driving a taxicab and running a small business repairing typewriters, when he managed to sign a deal with a Czechoslovakian company to manufacture their designs in Canada. He moved to Toronto to start production. By the late 1950s a wave of Japanese machines forced most North American typewriter companies to cease business, but Tramiel instead turned to adding machines. (Full article...)