Shiraz Shivji (born 1947 in what is now Tanzania) was the primary designer of the 1985

Atari ST The Atari ST is a line of personal computers from Atari Corporation and the successor to the Atari 8-bit family. The initial model, the Atari 520ST, had limited release in April–June 1985 and was widely available in July. It was the first pers ...

computer, and one of the engineers of the

Commodore 64 The Commodore 64, also known as the C64, is an 8-bit computing, 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 ...

Biography

Shiraz Shivji, born 1947 in what is now Tanzania, was of

Indian Indian or Indians may refer to: Peoples South Asia * Indian people, people of Indian nationality, or people who have an Indian ancestor ** Non-resident Indian, a citizen of India who has temporarily emigrated to another country * South Asia ...

Ismaili heritage. He was interested in electronics from an early age in what is now Tanzania. He was educated in the United Kingdom, where he obtained a first-class honours degree at the

University of Southampton , mottoeng = The Heights Yield to Endeavour , type = Public research university , established = 1862 – Hartley Institution1902 – Hartley University College1913 – Southampton University Coll ...

. He then moved to the United States, where he obtained a master's degree in electrical engineering at Stanford University during 1969–1973.

Commodore

Shivji began work at Silicon Valley, and found work at

Commodore International Commodore International (other names include Commodore International Limited) was an American home computer and electronics manufacturer founded by Jack Tramiel. Commodore International (CI), along with its subsidiary Commodore Business Mach ...

, where he was one of the engineers that helped build the

. By 1984, he had been promoted to being the director of engineering at Commodore. In 1984, Shivji was involved in a scandal related to his work on the

Commodore 900 The Commodore 900 (also known as the C900, Z-8000, and Z-Machine) was a prototype microcomputer originally intended for business computing and, later, as an affordable UNIX workstation. It was to replace the aging PET/ CBM families of personal co ...

. He was one of three systems engineers on the project since its inception in 1983. He was sued by Commodore in mid-July 1984 for disclosing confidential research information connected to this project and disk drive design plans as he was beginning to transfer to

Atari Corporation Atari Corporation was an American manufacturer of computers and video game consoles. It was founded by Jack Tramiel on May 17, 1984, as Tramel Technology, Ltd., but then took on the Atari name less than two months later when Warner Communicat ...

with

Jack Tramiel Jack Tramiel ( ; born Idek Trzmiel; December 13, 1928 – April 8, 2012) was an American businessman and Holocaust survivor, best known for founding Commodore International. The Commodore PET, VIC-20 and Commodore 64 are some home compute ...

. He was acquitted of all charges in court alongside several other engineers.

Atari Corporation

When Jack Tramiel took over Atari in 1984, with a number of Commodore engineers, the company was in bad shape, and Shivji's proposed cheap, powerful home computer, codenamed 'Rock Bottom Price,' was seen as a solution to financial woes. While working for the newly founded

, Shivji was the primary designer of the

computer, among other projects. Shivji became Atari's Vice President of Research and Development, and led a team of six engineers who designed the

Atari 520ST The Atari ST is a line of personal computers from Atari Corporation and the successor to the Atari 8-bit family. The initial model, the Atari 520ST, had limited release in April–June 1985 and was widely available in July. It was the first pers ...

computer. This work was completed in five months (July to December 1984). The prototype presentation at the January 1985 Las Vegas CES was successful for Atari, and the product revived the company. Shivji later led the design of the

Atari TT The Atari TT030 is a member of the Atari ST family, released in 1990. It was originally intended to be a high-end Unix workstation, but Atari took two years to release a port of Unix SVR4 for the TT, which prevented the TT from ever being serious ...

before leaving Atari in 1990.

Post-Atari

Kamran Elahian Kamran Elahian ( fa, کامران الهیان) is an Iranian-American entrepreneur Entrepreneurship is the creation or extraction of economic value. With this definition, entrepreneurship is viewed as change, generally entailing risk beyond ...

recruited Shivji for his

startup company A startup or start-up is a company or project undertaken by an entrepreneur to seek, develop, and validate a scalable business model. While entrepreneurship refers to all new businesses, including self-employment and businesses that never intend t ...

, Momenta. While there Shivji designed the Momenta Pen Computer, the first pentop computer and one of the first full sized tablet computers. Shivji received numerous

patents A patent is a type of intellectual property that gives its owner the legal right to exclude others from making, using, or selling an invention for a limited period of time in exchange for publishing an enabling disclosure of the invention."A p ...

between the years of 2000 and 2007.

References

External links

Father of the ST

A tribute to the STList of patents filed
1947 births 20th-century American engineers 20th-century Indian engineers Alumni of the University of Southampton American electrical engineers Atari people Commodore people Indian Ismailis American Ismailis Tanzanian Ismailis Indian electrical engineers Indian emigrants to the United States Living people Stanford University alumni Tanzanian emigrants to the United States Tanzanian engineers Tanzanian people of Indian descent {{videogame-bio-stub