Intro to PET

by Neil Harris

It was March of 1978 and I was in love. We had been dating for a year, and it was time to get serious. I knew that because she told me so.

“I won’t marry you until you get yourself on a career path.”

I was young and directionless until that point. I had learned to program computers in high school and had spent every free moment there writing games and other programs. But programming for a living seemed boring, so when I went on to college I did not study computer science and, before long, had dropped out. I worked odd jobs – driving a taxi, working in a drugstore, even as an ice cream man one summer. I did work as a programmer for a while, for a small company that wrote accounting software for local businesses – and it was as boring as I expected.

But I was in love. So, I got a proper haircut and a new suit and checked the want ads in the newspaper. 

One ad caught my eye right away: “Sales help wanted for calculator and home computer store. Mr. Calculator, 1700 Sansom Street, Philadelphia.”

I called the store and spoke with the manager, Gene Beals. I explained that I had retail experience and was also a programmer. We set up an interview for 2 PM the next afternoon.

I arrived at the new store with my new suit and my new haircut. The shop was packed! Gene was the only person working there. The store had run a large ad in the Philadelphia Inquirer newspaper offering grand opening specials on a full line of Commodore calculators – and, by the way, they also showed off the new Commodore PET computer.

Gene was too busy with calculator shoppers to interview me at that time, and a small crowd was gathered at the one PET computer, typing random things and getting a lot of “? Syntax Error” responses.

So, I took over at the PET.

10 PRINT “What is your name”;

20 INPUT A$

30 FOR L=1 to 100

40 PRINT A$;” “;

50 NEXT L

RUN

The crowed was awed, and cheered! I kept them amused for hours, ad-libbing a variety of simple BASIC programs.

At 6 PM, Gene closed the store and we finally had an interview. I learned that the store was company-owned by Commodore, and that we could expect the occasional visit from execs who worked out of offices in the suburbs. We chatted about my background and interest. On the next day Gene called and offered me the job.

During the rest of that year, we sold a lot of calculators and a few PETs – we were required to only sell the computers at full list price and lost a lot of sales to discounters, although their customers came to us for support. We also spent our down time playing with the PET and figuring out how exactly it worked, since the documentation with the computer was pretty minimal. Gene published a newsletter called PET User Notes, and I contributed some tidbits, short articles and bits of code. We were part of the nascent Commodore community.

By the end of the year, Gene decided to move on and start his own business, AB Computers, as a PET dealer, and was much more successful at actually selling the computers than we were allowed to be at Mr. Calculator. I also left and worked as a programmer for a bit, then worked for Gene again at AB Computers, and then at a bigger store, a ComputerLand where we sold Apple ][, Atari, and CP/M systems (which were the most popular business PCs before IBM launched theirs. I also taught BASIC programming classes for a few extra dollars but also because I really enjoyed helping people learn programming, especially given the dismal state of computer manuals of that early era. 

From there I went to work at Commodore, but that is another story.

And, yes, she did marry me. ☺


The Philadelphia Mr. Calculator store stood at the site where Greens and Grains is today.

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