Apple I: The Start of Something Huge

In our kick-off excerpt from the gorgeous coffee table book Core Memory, photographed by Mark Richards and written by John Alderman, we learn of the Cinderella-like beginning of the Apple saga.

Name: Apple I
Year created: 1976
Creator: Apple Computer Company
Price: $666.66
Memory: 4KB semiconductor
Processor: MOS technology 6502

Of course people would want their own computer. But when Steve Wozniak offered a design for one to his employer, Hewlett-Packard, it was rejected. With fate on his side, Wozniak introduced the Apple I to Silicon Valley's Homebrew Computer Club, even if it was a little more than a kit. Kits were popular with hobbyists, and the offerings were often crafted by users onto wooden boards, as pictured here.

Sensing that the market for a personal computer went beyond people who had the time to put together their own, Wozniak (or "Woz" as he is known, and evidently signs his name) and his friend Steve Jobs sold fifty pre-built Apple I computers to The Byte Shop in Mountain View. If the biblical allusions of the price and the image of temptation represented by an apple weren't enough, many believed that "Apple" was a reference to the Beatles' Apple Corps record label. All of these cultural markers conveyed that this computer, and the company that made it, was for cool people who were in on the joke and ready to take the reins of technological power--or at least have a bit more fun with it. The computer industry was beginning to make serious inroads into popular culture--or was it the reverse? It was Steve Jobs whose crafty marketing sense pushed all these themes into play. Not coincidentally, the idea of the computer "evangelist" proselytizing about new hard- or software took hold at Apple.

About two hundred models of the Apple I were sold--not as many as the Altair, but to Jobs and Wozniak, they established the concept and provided the fuel to form a company to launch the Apple II, a runaway success. And some important lessons were learned: Maybe it was the lack of a case that impressed on Jobs the importance of a good-looking box. Either way, no one has done more than Apple to turn the home-brewed computer into the beautiful, consumer-friendly machines, from the Macintosh to the iPod.