Skyles Electric Works
Skyles Electric Works is a company founded in California by Bob Skyles, a former Commodore engineer, to produce hardware add-ons for the Commodore PET. Like Apple Computer it began in a garage in Cupertino, but for most of the company's existence it was based in Mountain View.
| Industry | Software industry |
|---|---|
| Founder | Bob Skyles |
| Headquarters | , U.S. |
| Products | Software |
The first products from Skyles Electric Works were memory expansions and keyboards (the first PETs had calculator-style keys which were unsuited to touch-typing).
The earliest software products were firmware, including the Command-O and Disk-O-Pro, which enhanced the BASIC language of the PET.
However, the company also published cassette and disk-based software including Busicalc, the first spreadsheet program for the Commodore 64, and which was licensed from Supersoft in England. Busicalc and the follow-up products Busicalc 2 and Busicalc 3 were highly successful in the US market during 1983-84, and encouraged Skyles Electric Works to source other similar products which were rebranded to form part of the Busi series, notably Busidata and Busiwrite. Another C-64 title was the game Megapede written by Paul Andrus.[1]