The Commodore 64 was one of the most successful home computers in the world selling around 11-17 million units between 1982 to 1993!

There were several versions of the C64 from the original "Bull Nosed" style through to the later re-styled version and even versions produced specifically for the education market.

The C64 features 64 kilobytes of RAM with sound and graphics performance that were superior to IBM-compatible computers of that time. During the Commodore 64's lifetime (between 1982 and 1994), sales totalled around 17 million units. Part of its success was due to the fact that it was sold in retail stores instead of electronics stores, and that Commodore produced many of its parts in-house to control supplies and cost.

Approximately 10,000 commercial software titles were made for the Commodore 64 including development tools, office applications, and games. The machine is also credited with popularizing the computer demo scene. The Commodore 64 is still used today by some computer hobbyists, and emulators allow anyone with a modern computer to run these programs on their desktop.

The Commodore 64 C was released in 1986, and is cosmetically different to the original version, which is affectionately known as the bread bin, this was styled to fit more with the Amiga and C128 machines, there were also internal differences, such as revised SID and Vic chips.

Manufacturer: Commodore
Date: March 1987

This exhibit has a reference ID of CH46015. Please quote this reference ID in any communication with the Centre for Computing History.