Floppy Days 167 - Interview with Peter Jennings, Microchess and VisiCorp

Interview with Peter Jennings, Microchess & VisiCorp

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Hello, and welcome to episode #167 of the Floppy Days Podcast, where you can learn about obsolete, but still very fun, technology of the past!

In this episode we talk with someone that was right there in the early days of computers and who created some amazing software for the very early, very primitive KIM-1 computer. In fact, he is credited with producing the very first microcomputer game to be sold commercially. I'm speaking of Peter Jennings, the creator of MicroChess for the KIM-1 and later ported to many other early home computers, such as the TRS-80 Model I/III, Commodore PET, Apple II, Tandy CoCo, and Atari 8-bit.

Peter co-founded Personal Software, which later became VisiCorp. Proceeds from MicroChess sales helped finance the development of VisiCalc, the first-ever spreadsheet program, which I'm sure you've heard of.

Peter also developed the first model of the ChessMate while working for Commodore.

I think you'll find his story pretty interesting. He's done a lot throughout his career and he's met a lot of the early computer icons.

Interview Links

• Peter's Website - https://benlo.com

• VisiCorp at Wikipedia - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VisiCorp

• Peter at Wikipedia - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_R._Jennings

• Microchess at Wikipedia - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microchess

• Brad Templeton - https://www.templetons.com/brad/

• The Commodore ChessMate - https://commodore.international/2022/03/26/the-history-of-the-commodore-chessmate/

• The Pocket Guide to World History - https://pockethistory.com/