One Apple 1 is very special
At the calculating roots of our high school math courses was a rather crude looking computer called the Apple 1. Guess what? A model of the Apple-1 (above) recently sold for a stratospheric $US905,000 by Bonhams auction house! This was a working model of the Apple-1 and among the 50 models that were assembled by Steve Wozniak – Apple’s co-founder along with the more outgoing marketer, Steve Jobs. All of the Apple-1 machines were hand assembled at Steve Job’s family garage in Los Altos, California in the year 1976. This particular example was in perfect working condition, which helps explain its high price. It was purchased to be put on display at The Henry Ford Museum in Dearborn, Michigan. (H3 Note: Why didn’t I buy one back then?). Read more here.
PS: The hard sell to get Apple computers into schools seemed to start with the Apple II, along with its floppy disks. Students seemed to spend most of their time flipping between disks in order to get their work done. From the experience of H3, these early Apples were not competing well for space in the Math Departments – where preferred number-crunchers were the TRS-80s and Commodores. The, later in the 1890’s, along comes a really small, all-in-one design (the Mac) which had color to entice the Art students, along with a trail of lemmings from the English and Language departments who loved the cool “Truetype” fonts and ease of use. (see: History of Apple Models)
