Commodore Advert - February 1983

The Commodore 64 was the company's replacement for its VIC-20 machine, the limited but popular home computer which was the first to sell more than 1 million units.

Designed by a team including Bob Russell, Bob Yannes, Al Charpentier, and Charles Winterble, it was first shown at the Consumer Electronics Show in January 1982, but wasn't available for sale until August of that year. It was launched in the UK at the beginning of 1983.

This is likely one of the first UK adverts for it, appearing as it did in Commodore's own publication - Commodore Computing International - in the February '83 issue.

To keep development costs down, the original C64s used the same case and keyboard as the earlier VIC-20, although the colour of plastic differed.

However, it hugely improved over its ancestor as it contained MOS Technology's 6581 SID chip - the Sound Interface Device - designed by Bob Yannes.

This gave the 64 vastly improved sound over the simple voices of the VIC. As well as SID, the 64 contains the VIC-II chip - designed by Charpentier and Winterble - which handled its graphics.

This chip combined several ideas from other micros of the day. Sprites came from TI's TI-99/4A, whilst bitmap graphics came from Atari's 800.

The end result was a machine which became - after a slow start - incredibly popular, selling somewhere around 13 million units^[1]. It apparently remains the highest-selling single-model home computer of all time.

At launch in the UK, it retailed for £299 - about £1,180 in 2024.

At the time of the advert, a report from micro-analyst Robin Bradbeer had recently been published. It showed that 509,000 microcomputers had been bought in the UK in 1982, of which over half were from Sinclair, with 220,000 ZX81s and 75,000 Spectrums.

Commodore was in second place with the VIC-20, having shifted 100,000 units in the UK, whilst Acorn was fourth, with 40,000 for its Proton, a.k.a BBC Micro.

The Commodore 64 had been launched in Europe at the Hanover Fair in April 1982, and Commodore fully expected the VIC-20 to "fade gently into obscurity". However, by October of that year it was increasing production again as it passed the 1 million sales mark for the VIC.

The report concluded of the UK micro scene that:

"Per head of population we have twice as many machines in the UK as the US and one and a half times as many as Japan. Over two thirds of all PCs sold in Europe are sold in the UK. We also have more manufacturing than anybody else and are producing more machines. And our distribution chain is more efficient than those in the US and Japan^[2]".

There was some concern as well about the size of the potential market, with Guy Kewney reporting in February's Personal Computer World about a dealer who suggested:

"We may have only 2.5% penetration of the 17 million British households but it just depends how many households you think are potential customers. 80% of [people] in this country can't operate a VCR and at the same time 40% of homes consist of people over the age of 55 and they're unlikely customers".