Skyles Electric Works is a company founded in 1978 in

California California is a U.S. state, state in the Western United States, located along the West Coast of the United States, Pacific Coast. With nearly 39.2million residents across a total area of approximately , it is the List of states and territori ...

by Bob Skyles, a former

Commodore Commodore may refer to: Ranks * Commodore (rank), a naval rank ** Commodore (Royal Navy), in the United Kingdom ** Commodore (United States) ** Commodore (Canada) ** Commodore (Finland) ** Commodore (Germany) or ''Kommodore'' * Air commodore ...

engineer, to produce hardware add-ons for the

Commodore PET The Commodore PET is a line of personal computers produced starting in 1977 by Commodore International. A single all-in-one case combines a MOS Technology 6502 microprocessor, Commodore BASIC in read-only memory, keyboard, monochrome monitor, an ...

. Like

Apple Computer Apple Inc. is an American multinational technology company headquartered in Cupertino, California, United States. Apple is the largest technology company by revenue (totaling in 2021) and, as of June 2022, is the world's biggest company b ...

, it began in a garage in

Cupertino, California Cupertino ( ) is a city in Santa Clara County, California, United States, directly west of San Jose on the western edge of the Santa Clara Valley with portions extending into the foothills of the Santa Cruz Mountains. The population was 57,8 ...

, but for most of the company's existence it was based in nearby Mountain View. The company employed 13 between 1985 and 1987 and reached annual sales of over $501,000 in those years. The first products from Skyles Electric Works were memory expansions and keyboards (the first PETs had

calculator An electronic calculator is typically a portable electronic device used to perform calculations, ranging from basic arithmetic to complex mathematics. The first solid-state electronic calculator was created in the early 1960s. Pocket-sized ...

-style keys which were unsuited to touch-typing). The earliest software products were

firmware In computing, firmware is a specific class of computer software that provides the low-level control for a device's specific hardware. Firmware, such as the BIOS of a personal computer, may contain basic functions of a device, and may provide h ...

, including the ''Command-O'' and ''Disk-O-Pro'', which enhanced the

BASIC BASIC (Beginners' All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code) is a family of general-purpose, high-level programming languages designed for ease of use. The original version was created by John G. Kemeny and Thomas E. Kurtz at Dartmouth College ...

language of the PET. The company also published cassette and disk-based software including ''Busicalc'', the first spreadsheet program for the

Commodore 64 The Commodore 64, also known as the C64, is an 8-bit home computer introduced in January 1982 by Commodore International (first shown at the Consumer Electronics Show, January 7–10, 1982, in Las Vegas). It has been listed in the Guinness ...

, and which was licensed from

Supersoft Supersoft was a software and computer game developer and publisher founded in England in 1978. It was founded by Peter Calver and Pearl Wellard to develop and publish software primarily for the Commodore PET. History The earliest Supersoft catalo ...

in England. ''Busicalc'' and the follow-up products ''Busicalc 2'' and ''Busicalc 3'' were highly successful in the US market during 1983 and 1984, and encouraged Skyles Electric Works to source other similar products which were rebranded to form part of the Busi series, notably ''Busidata'' . Another C64 title was the game ''Megapede'' written by Paul Andrus. Among the company's last offerings were memory expansion boards for the 500, 1000, and

2000 File:2000 Events Collage.png, From left, clockwise: Protests against Bush v. Gore after the 2000 United States presidential election; Heads of state meet for the Millennium Summit; The International Space Station in its infant form as seen from ...

models of the

Amiga Amiga is a family of personal computers introduced by Commodore in 1985. The original model is one of a number of mid-1980s computers with 16- or 32-bit processors, 256 KB or more of RAM, mouse-based GUIs, and significantly improved graphi ...

computer. Skyles Electric Works dissolved in 1993.

References

External links

* Defunct computer companies of the United States Defunct computer companies based in California {{compu-company-stub