| Skyles Electric Works | |
| Type: | Private |
| Industry: | Software industry |
| Fate: | Dissolution |
| Founded: | in Cupertino, California, United States |
| Founder: | Bob Skyles |
| Hq Location City: | Mountain View |
| Hq Location Country: | United States |
| Products: | Software |
| Num Employees: | 13 |
| Num Employees Year: | 1985–1987 |
Skyles Electric Works is a company founded in 1978 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, California, but for most of the company's existence it was based in nearby Mountain View.[1] The company employed 13 between 1985 and 1987 and reached annual sales of over $501,000 in those years.[2] [3]
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).[4]
The earliest software products were firmware, including the Command-O and Disk-O-Pro, which enhanced the BASIC language of the PET.[5]
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.[6] [7] Busicalc and the follow-up products Busicalc 2 and Busicalc 3 were highly successful in the US market during 1983 and 1984,[8] and encouraged Skyles Electric Works to source other similar products which were rebranded to form part of the Busi series, notably Busidata .[9] Another C64 title was the game Megapede written by Paul Andrus.[10] Among the company's last offerings were memory expansion boards for the 500, 1000, and 2000 models of the Amiga computer.[11]
Skyles Electric Works dissolved in 1993.[12]