Skyles Electric Works

Skyles Electric Works was 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.

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.

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