HISTORICAL FACTS

Women in the History of Computing Technology

Jeri Ellsworth

Jeri Ellsworth is an American entrepreneur and self-taught computer chip designer, best known for creating the Commodore 64 emulator within a joystick, later called Commodore 30-in-1 Direct to TV. Her invention, which represents a “computer in a joystick” and makes it possible to run over 30 video games at the same time, becomes very popular in 2004 (the year of its introduction), at peak selling more than 70,000 units in a single day via the QVC shopping channel.

Jeri Ellsworth was born in Yamhill, Oregon, USA in 1974. She grows up in the town of Dallas, Oregon, where she is raised by her father, a local Mobil service station owner.

Jeri gets interested in electronics and computers at a very early age. As a teenager, she persuades her father to let her use the Commodore 64 computer, which he has originally purchased for her brother, and teaches herself to program the machine by reading its manuals. While in high school, she drives dirt-track race cars with her father, and even begins designing new models in his workshop, eventually selling her own custom race cars. The business proves to be successful and she drops out of school to continue it for several more years.

In 1995, at the age of 21, Ellsworth decides to quit the race car business, and, along with a friend, starts an early Intel 486-based PC business, assembling and selling personal computers. When she and her partner, however, later have a disagreement, she opens a new store of her own in competition to the old one. It is this new store that makes it possible for her private business to expand further and allows her to form the famous chain “Computers Made Easy,” involved in selling computer equipment primarily in small towns all over Oregon. Jeri herself runs the chain until 2000, when she decides to sell it and move to Walla Walla, Washington in order to continue her education at Walla Walla College. She studies circuit design there for about a year but drops out because of a “cultural mismatch.”

Jeri Ellsworth

In 2000, Jeri Ellsworth attends her first Commodore Expo, where she introduces a prototype video expansion for the C64 model. Her project later evolves to become the C-One and C64-DTV. From then on, she focuses her work on designing computer circuits that mimic the behavior of the Commodore 64. In 2002, she creates the electronic chip used in the C-One, a board co-designed and manufactured by Jens Schönfeld that further leads her to receive a job offer from Mammoth Toys, a company which hires her to design the “computer within a chip” for the Commodore-emulating joystick. Jeri starts working on the project in June, 2004, and has it done by Christmas. Selling over a half-million units, the Commodore 30-in-1 Direct to TV joystick becomes her greatest accomplishment during her career in the computing branch.

Currently Jeri Ellsworth works as a consultant. On 25 February, 2010, she is named MacGyver of the Day by LifeHacker.


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