Technologizer's Harry McCracken has unearthed some photographs taken by Paul Terrell of the Byte Shop in Mountain View, California in 1976. At the time, the Byte Shop was one of the only computer stores in the world, and ended up being the first dealer for an upstart company called Apple Computer.
According to Terrell, Jobs and Wozniak came into his shop with the first version of the Apple-1 asking him to sell it to his customers. Here's an early photo of the circuit board hooked up to a keyboard and monitor.
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They called their machine the Apple-1, and it was a bare board; any buyers would have to solder on the necessary chips themselves, then supply accoutrements such as a power supply, keyboard and display.
Terrell was intrigued, but told Jobs that what he really needed were fully-assembled computers. In fact, if Jobs could come back with an assembled version of the Apple-1, the Byte Shop would buy fifty of them. Jobs did, and the Byte Shop became the first Apple dealer (it eventually offered the Apple-1 in a wooden case with keyboard and power supply).
Terrell eventually paid $500 each for 50 Apple-1's, which history says sold for $666.66 each at retail. There are more pictures, and some additional backstory, at Technologizer.
Top Rated Comments
Slow comment day today?
arn
People today only want a new iPhone with a new shape or a bigger screen and they don't even seem to care when it looks exactly the same but everything inside has been upgraded.
But to us nerds, which is the kind of people it takes to build such devices by the way, this kind of news is 1000 times more interesting than hearing about lawsuits or contract deals with heartless media mega-corporations.
If you don't like a story, just don't comment on it or start your own website where you can approve the stories yourself. Anything else is just noise that doesn't add anything to the discussion of the topic.
This is the kind of thing that doesn't exist any more in today's world.
These days, you'd have all sorts of regulatory and legal hurdles: you'd need certification for wireless parts, you'd need to invest a significant amount of time in protecting your IP (trademarks), and you'd probably get a fair number of aggressive patent challenges.
You can't just make something and take it to a shop and get it sold to people any more.
Indeed, I'd rather see pictures of the first Apples than hear about a lawsuit or some ****** TV.
This is 10 times more interesting.