Jeri Ellsworth

Jeri Ellsworth (born 1974) is an American entrepreneur and autodidact computer chip designer and inventor. Currently the president of Technical Illusions, she became known in 2004 for creating a complete Commodore 64 system on a chip within a joystick, called C64 Direct-to-TV. That "computer in a joystick" could run 30 video games from the early 1980s and was a very popular Christmas gift, at peak selling over 70,000 units in a single day via the QVC shopping channel. In late 2014, Ellsworth moved from Seattle to Mountain View, California with her team.

Biography

Ellsworth was born in Georgia and grew up in the towns of Dallas, Oregon and Yamhill, Oregon, where she was raised by her father, a local Mobil filling station owner. As a child, she persuaded her father to let her use a Commodore 64 computer which had been originally purchased for her brother. She taught herself to program by reading the C64's manuals. While at high school, she drove dirt-track race cars with her father, and then began designing new models in his workshop, eventually selling her own custom race cars. This allowed her to drop out of high school to continue the business.