A 1976 to 1977 story
The first Apple computer, the Apple I, dates from 1976, and the Apple II that made the company’s name was introduced in 1977. Neither belongs to 1967, a year when personal computers did not yet exist. The roots of the story are in the mid-1970s, when cheap microprocessors made it possible for a hobbyist to own a computer.
The Homebrew Computer Club
In January 1975 the magazine Popular Electronics featured the Altair 8800, a kit computer built around an Intel microprocessor. It had switches and lights rather than a keyboard and screen, but it showed that a computer could be sold to individuals. Enthusiasts in the San Francisco Bay Area soon formed the Homebrew Computer Club, whose first meeting is generally dated to March 1975 in Menlo Park, California.
The club was informal. Members swapped parts, circuit diagrams and ideas, and showed off what they had built. It drew people who were interested in electronics, in sharing information freely, and in the idea that computing should be accessible, attitudes that overlapped with the wider American counterculture of the period. Steve Wozniak, then working as an engineer at Hewlett-Packard, began attending.
Wozniak and the Apple I
Wozniak designed a small computer that he could use himself, built around the MOS Technology 6502 microprocessor, which was far cheaper than competing chips. His design was admired for using few components. It could connect to a keyboard and a television set, so it did not need the front-panel switches of the Altair. Steve Jobs, who was friends with Wozniak, saw that it could be sold rather than just given away to club members.
Apple Computer was founded on 1 April 1976 by Jobs, Wozniak and a third partner, Ronald Wayne, who left the company shortly afterwards. The Apple I was sold as an assembled circuit board, without a case, keyboard or monitor, which the buyer had to supply. It reportedly sold for $666.66, and a local computer store, the Byte Shop, placed an early order for fifty units. Accounts commonly suggest that only a couple of hundred Apple I machines were built, though exact numbers vary by source.
The Apple II
The Apple II was a different kind of product. Wozniak again did the engineering, while Jobs pushed for a finished consumer-style package with a moulded plastic case and a built-in keyboard. Mike Markkula, an experienced businessman and former Intel executive, invested in the company and helped bring in professional management; Apple was incorporated in January 1977.
The machine was shown at the West Coast Computer Faire in April 1977. It offered colour graphics on an ordinary television, sound, and expansion slots inside the case that let owners add cards for new functions. The base model with 4 kilobytes of memory reportedly launched at $1,298. That price was substantial, but it was within reach of many small businesses, schools and keen households.
Why the Apple II became a mass product
Several things helped, and historians usually point to a combination rather than a single cause.
- It arrived ready to use, not as a kit to solder together.
- Its open design, with expansion slots, encouraged third-party hardware and software.
- It was one of three notable ready-made machines launched in 1977, alongside the Commodore PET and the Tandy TRS-80, so the market was expanding quickly.
- Software eventually gave business buyers a reason to purchase one. The spreadsheet program VisiCalc, released in 1979 and initially available on the Apple II, is often cited as a major reason why small businesses bought the machine.
The Apple II line was updated and sold for many years, which is part of why it is remembered as a lasting product and not just a first attempt.
How much credit and how much myth
Popular accounts tend to compress this history into two garage-based inventors. The garage is part of the story, but so are the hobbyist community, cheap chips made available by the semiconductor industry, outside investors and a fast-growing market. The Apple I was not the first microcomputer, since the Altair and other kits came earlier, and Apple was not the only company to make a successful ready-made machine in 1977.
What the Apple II did was combine existing ideas into a product that ordinary buyers could take home and use. That is a real achievement, but a more modest one than the word “revolutionary” in the title implies. In 1967, by contrast, computers were still mainframes and minicomputers in institutional rooms.