26 Facts About Jeri Ellsworth

Jeri Janet Ellsworth was born on August 14,1974 and is an American entrepreneur, computer chip designer and inventor.

Jeri Ellsworth gained fame in 2004 for creating a complete Commodore 64 emulator system on a chip housed within a joystick, called Commodore 30-in-1 Direct to TV.

Jeri Ellsworth started another company, Tilt Five, to create AR hardware based on the same principles.

Jeri Ellsworth has publicly talked about various homebrew projects, such as how to manufacture semiconductor chips at home.

Jeri Ellsworth was born in Georgia and grew up in the towns of Dallas, Oregon and Yamhill, Oregon.

Jeri Ellsworth was raised by her father, Jim, a car mechanic and Mobil service station owner.

Jeri Ellsworth persuaded her father to let her use a Commodore 64 computer which had been purchased for her brother.

Jeri Ellsworth taught herself to program by reading the manual.

Jeri Ellsworth earned spending money working for her father, pumping gas, cleaning wrenches, replacing oil filters, and other "mechanical things".

Jeri Ellsworth dropped out of high school to continue the business.

When she and her partner had a disagreement, Jeri Ellsworth opened a separate business in competition.

Jeri Ellsworth left after a year because of a "cultural mismatch".

In 2000, Jeri Ellsworth unveiled a prototype video expansion for the C64 at a Commodore Exposition.

Jeri Ellsworth then began designing digital circuits that mimicked the behavior of the Commodore 64.

Jeri Ellsworth began the project in June 2004 and had the project ready to ship by that Christmas.

Jeri Ellsworth didn't receive payment, nor the commission she was owed, but a story in the New York Times brought her to the public eye.

On December 3,2010 Jeri Ellsworth released information on how to build a TSA "naked" scanner using repurposed satellite antenna parts.

Jeri Ellsworth has worked on numerous subjects as diverse as homemade semiconductors, homemade electroluminescent displays, EL phosphor manufacture from common ingredients and ways to make transparent EL backplanes and phosphor without using expensive indium-tin-oxide coated glass and hard-to-obtain chemicals.

Jeri Ellsworth was named "MacGyver of the Day" on February 25,2010 by Lifehacker.

On May 18,2013, Jeri Ellsworth announced that she had developed an augmented reality development system named castAR with fellow ex-Valve engineer Rick Johnson, with the blessing of Valve's Gabe Newell, and would be funding it via Kickstarter later in the year.

Jeri Ellsworth later revealed she had been secretly working to make castAR have "true VR and true AR" in addition to the previously announced projected AR capabilities.

In September 2019, Jeri Ellsworth initiated a Kickstarter for a new device based on the same principles of the castAR, called Tilt Five.

Jeri Ellsworth was a keynote speaker at the Embedded Systems Conference on May 5,2011.

From December 2008 until March 2009, Jeri Ellsworth hosted a weekly webcast, Fatman and Circuit Girl, together with musician George Sanger.

On May 30,2009, Jeri Ellsworth demonstrated her Home Chip Lab at Maker Faire Bay Area 2009.

Jeri Ellsworth is a pinball aficionado and owns over 80 pinball machines.