Chuck Peddle, the engineer and entrepreneur who helped launch the age of the personal computer has died in California

He was 82.

In 1974, Chuck Peddle and several other engineers were designing a new silicon chip at the Motorola Corporation in Phoenix when the company sent him a letter demanding that he shut the project down.

He envisioned an ultra-low-cost chip that could bring digital technology to a new breed of consumer devices, from cash registers to personal computers.

But his bosses saw it as unwanted in-house competition for the $300 processor Motorola had unveiled that year.

So Mr. Peddle moved the project to a rival chip maker, taking seven other Motorola engineers with him.

There they built a processor called the 6502.

Priced at $25 this chip soon powered the first big wave of personal computers in both the United States and Britain, including the Apple II and the Commodore PET.