Shiraz Shivji (born 1947 in what is now known as

Tanzania Tanzania, officially the United Republic of Tanzania, is a country in East Africa within the African Great Lakes region. It is bordered by Uganda to the northwest; Kenya to the northeast; the Indian Ocean to the east; Mozambique and Malawi to t ...

) was the primary designer of the

Atari ST Atari ST is a line of personal computers from Atari Corporation and the successor to the company's Atari 8-bit computers, 8-bit computers. The initial model, the Atari 520ST, had limited release in April–June 1985, and was widely available i ...

computer for

Atari Corporation Atari Corporation was an American manufacturer of Home computer, home computers and Video game console, 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 ...

, which was developed in five months and released in 1985, and one of the engineers who developed 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

, was of Indian Ismaili heritage.

Commodore

Shivji began work at

Silicon Valley Silicon Valley is a region in Northern California that is a global center for high technology and innovation. Located in the southern part of the San Francisco Bay Area, it corresponds roughly to the geographical area of the Santa Clara Valley ...

, and found work at

Commodore International Commodore International Corporation was a home computer and electronics manufacturer with its head office in The Bahamas and its executive office in the United States founded in 1976 by Jack Tramiel and Irving Gould. It was the successor compan ...

, 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. 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

with

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

. 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 Atari ST is a line of personal computers from Atari Corporation and the successor to the company's Atari 8-bit computers, 8-bit computers. The initial model, the Atari 520ST, had limited release in April–June 1985, and was widely available i ...

computer. This work was completed in five months (July to December 1984). Shivji later led the design of the Atari TT before leaving Atari in 1990.

Post-Atari

Kamran Elahian Kamran Elahian () is an Iranian-American entrepreneur Entrepreneurship is the creation or extraction of economic value in ways that generally entail beyond the minimal amount of risk (assumed by a traditional business), and potentially invo ...

recruited Shivji for his 1989

startup company A startup or start-up is a company or project undertaken by an Entrepreneurship, entrepreneur to seek, develop, and validate a scalable business model. While entrepreneurship includes all new businesses including self-employment and businesses tha ...

, Momenta. While there Shivji designed the Momenta Pen Computer, an early pentop computer and one of the first full sized

tablet computers A tablet computer, commonly shortened to tablet, is a mobile device, typically with a mobile operating system and touchscreen display processing circuitry, and a rechargeable battery in a single, thin and flat package. Tablets, being computers ...

. Shivji received seven

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 sufficiency of disclosure, enabling discl ...

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