{{Infobox personal computer
| name = Apple Computer 1
| aka = Apple I, Apple-1
| logo = Apple-1.svg
| image = CopsonApple1_2k_cropped.jpg
| alt = A large, rectangular circuit board with mostly uniform chips arranged neatly in a grid. The rows are labeled A through D and the columns are numbered 1 to 18. Printed between rows of chips is the text, "Apple Computer 1", "Palo Alto, [California] Copyright 1976". There are three large cylindrical capacitors laying sideways in the corner. The board is sprinkled with small components including ceramic resistors and
| caption =
| developer = Steve Wozniak
| manufacturer = Apple Computer Company
| family =
| type = Motherboard-only personal computer kit
| generation =
| release_date =
| lifespan =
| price =
| discontinued =
| os = Custom system monitor
| units_sold =
| units_shipped =
| media =
| power =
| system_on_chip =
| cpu = MOS 6502
| cpu_speed = 1 MHz
| memory = 4 or 8 KB
| storage = 256 B ROM
| memory_card = Cassette tape
| display =
| graphics = 40×24 characters, hardware-implemented scrolling (Signetics 2513 "64×8×5 Character Generator")
| sound =
| input =
| controllers =
| camera =
| touchpad =
| connectivity =
| platform =
| online_services =
| dimensions =
| weight =
| top_game =
| compatibility =
| predecessor =
| successor = Apple II
| marketing_target = Early hobbyist
| related =
| made_in = USA
}}
The Apple Computer 1 (Apple-1), often referred to as the Apple I, is an 8-bit personal computer electrically designed by Steve Wozniak and released by the Apple Computer Company (now Apple Inc.) in 1976. The company was initially formed to sell the Apple Iits first product and would later become the world's largest technology company. The idea of starting a company and selling the computer came from Wozniak's friend and Apple co-founder Steve Jobs.
The key differentiator of the Apple I was that it included video display terminal circuitry, allowing it to connect to a low-cost composite video monitor and keyboard instead of an expensive accompanying terminal such as the Teletype Model 33 commonly used by other early personal computers. The Apple I and the Sol-20 were some of the earliest home computers to have this capability.
To finance the Apple I's development, Wozniak and Jobs sold some of their possessions for a few hundred dollars. Wozniak demonstrated the first prototype in July 1976 at the Homebrew Computer Club in Palo Alto, California, impressing the Byte Shop, an early computer retailer. After securing an order for 50 computers, Jobs was able to order the parts on credit and deliver the first Apple products after ten days.
The Apple I was one of the first computers available that used the MOS Technology 6502 microprocessor. An expansion included a BASIC interpreter, allowing users to utilize BASIC at home instead of at institutions with mainframe computers, greatly lowering the entry cost for computing with BASIC.
Production was discontinued on September 30, 1977, after the June 10, 1977 introduction of its successor, the Apple II, which Byte magazine referred to as part of the "1977 Trinity" of personal computing (along with the PET 2001 from Commodore Business Machines and the TRS-80 Model I from Tandy Corporation). As relatively few Apple I computers were made before the model was discontinued, coupled with their status as Apple's first product, surviving Apple I units are now displayed in computer museums and demand high prices at auction.
The computer is still mentioned on the Apple website, and it is listed as 'obsolete' as more than 7 years have passed since its discontinuation.
History
Development
thumb|[[Steve Wozniak alone designed the circuit and operating system for the Apple I.]]
In 1974, while visiting famous phone phreak John Draper in California, Steve Wozniak watched him connect a modem to the ARPANET – the precursor to the internet – and use a teleprinter to play chess with someone from Boston; this inspired him to make a cheap terminal that used an inexpensive keyboard from Sears and a standard TV. Later in March 1975, Wozniak started attending meetings of the Homebrew Computer Club, which was a major source of inspiration for him. New microcomputers such as the Altair 8800 inspired Wozniak to build a microprocessor into his video terminal circuit to make a complete computer. At the time the only appropriate CPUs available were the Intel 8080 and the Motorola 6800. Of these options, Wozniak preferred the 6800, though he was financially unable to obtain either. Instead, he began designing computers on paper until he could afford a CPU.
When the $25 MOS Technology 6502 was released in late 1975, Wozniak wrote a version of BASIC for it, then began to design a computer for it to run on. The 6502 was developed by many of the same engineers that designed the 6800, as many in Silicon Valley left employers to form their own companies. Wozniak's earlier 6800 computer design needed only minor changes to run on the new processor.
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After building a prototype computer for himself and showing it at the club, he and Steve Jobs gave out schematics (technical designs) for the computer to interested club members and even helped some of them build and test out copies. Then, Steve Jobs suggested that they design and sell a single etched and silkscreened circuit boardjust the bare board, with no electronic partsthat people could use to build the computers. Wozniak calculated that having the board design laid out would cost and manufacturing would cost another per board; he hoped to recoup his costs if 50 people bought the boards for each.
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By March 1, 1976, Wozniak completed the basic design of his computer. Wozniak originally offered the design to HP while working there, but it was rejected by the company on five occasions. When he demonstrated his computer at the Homebrew Computer Club, his friend and fellow club regular Steve Jobs was immediately interested in its commercial potential. Wozniak intended to share schematics of the machine for free; however, Jobs advised him to start a business together and sell bare printed circuit boards (PCBs) for the computer, without any components soldered on. Wozniak, at first skeptical, was later convinced by Jobs that even if they were not successful they could at least say to their grandchildren that they had had their own company. To raise the money they needed to build the first batch of the circuit boards, Wozniak sold his HP-65 scientific calculator while Jobs sold his Volkswagen van.
{{external media
| image1 = Byte Shop storefront
| image2 = The prototype shown to Terrell
| image3 = Wozniak and Jobs with an Apple I
}}
After the company was formed a month later, Jobs and Wozniak gave a presentation of the fully assembled "Apple Computer A" at the Homebrew Computer Club. Paul Terrell, who was starting a new computer shop in Mountain View, California, called the Byte Shop, saw the presentation and was impressed by the machine. Terrell told Jobs that he would order 50 units of the Apple I and pay $500 each on delivery, but only if they came fully assembledhe was not interested in buying bare printed circuit boards with no components.
Wozniak had designed the electrical circuit, but the board design for the Apple 1 was done by Howard Cantin, a PCB layout engineer at Atari.
Jobs took the purchase order from the Byte Shop to national electronic parts distributor Cramer Electronics, and ordered the components needed. When asked by the credit manager how he would pay for the parts, Jobs replied, "I have this purchase order from the Byte Shop chain of computer stores for 50 of my computers and the payment terms are COD. If you give me the parts on net 30-day terms I can build and deliver the computers in that time frame, collect my money from Terrell at the Byte Shop and pay you."
To verify the purchase order, the credit manager called Paul Terrell, who assured him if the computers showed up, Jobs would have more than enough money for the parts order. The two Steves and their small crew spent day and night building and testing the computers, and delivered to Terrell on time. Terrell was surprised to receive a batch of assembled circuit boards, as he had expected complete computers with a case, monitor and keyboard. Nonetheless, he kept his word and paid the two Steves the money promised.
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To fulfill the order, they obtained in parts at 30 days net and delivered the finished product in 10 days. Together the duo assembled the first boards in Jobs's parents' Los Altos home; initially in his bedroom and later (when there was no space left) in the garage. Wozniak's apartment in San Jose was too filled with monitors, electronic devices, and computer games that he had developed.
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Announcement and sales
thumb|Introductory advertisement for the Apple I computer
The Apple I went on sale in July 1976 at a price of . Wozniak later said he had no idea about the relation between the number and the number of the beast, and that he came up with the price because he liked "repeating digits" and because it was a one-third markup on the wholesale price. Jobs had managed to get the inventory into the nation's first four storefront microcomputer retailers: Byte Shop (Palo Alto, California), itty bitty machine company (Evanston, Illinois), Data Domain (Bloomington, Indiana), and Computer Mart (New York City).
The first unit produced was used in a high school math class, and donated to Liza Loop's public-access computer center. About 200 units were produced, and all but 25 were sold within nine or ten months.
In April 1977, the price was dropped to $475. It continued to be sold through August 1977, despite the introduction of the Apple II in April 1977, which began shipping in June of that year. In October 1977, the Apple I was officially discontinued and removed from Apple's price list. As Wozniak was the only person who could answer most customer support questions about the computer, the company offered Apple I owners discounts and trade-ins for Apple IIs to persuade them to return their computers. These recovered boards were then destroyed by Apple, contributing to their later rarity.
Both Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak have stated that Apple did not assign serial numbers to the Apple l. Several boards have been found with numbered stickers affixed to them, which appear to be inspection stickers from the PCB manufacturer/assembler. A batch of boards is known to have numbers hand-written in black permanent marker on the back; these usually appear as "01-00##". As of January 2022, 29 Apple-1s with a serial number are known. The highest known number is . Two original Apple-1s have been analyzed by Professional Sports Authenticator in Los Angeles, concluding that the serial numbers had been hand-written by Steve Jobs.
Hardware
{{multiple image|perrow = 2|total_width=300
| image1 = Apple 1 mfk bern.jpeg
| image2 = Original 1976 Apple 1 Computer In A Briefcase.JPG
| image3 = Apple I Computer.jpg
| image4 = Museum-Enter-Apple-1-6094652.jpg
| footer = A variety of Apple I cases supplied by customers. The Apple I did not include a stock case, so customers had to supply their own.
}}
The Apple I used a MOS Technology 6502 microprocessor running at , and its design was based largely on Wozniak's previous work centered around a Motorola 6800. The unconventional clock speed was chosen to be a fraction () of the NTSC color carrier, which simplified video circuitry. of memory was included on the base machine, which was expandable to on-board and up to by using an add-on card. On-board memory utilized newly available 4Kbit DRAM chips, and was designed to be upgradeable to the next generation of 16Kbit chips for a maximum of on-board memory.Apple I advertisement Oct 1978 An optional $75 plug-in cassette interface card could be used to store programs on ordinary audio cassette tapes. A BASIC interpreter, originally written by Wozniak, was provided with the cassette interface to make it easy to write programs and play simple games. An onboard AC power supply was included.
The Apple I did not come with a case. It could be used bare, although some users chose to build custom (typically wooden) enclosures.
Memory map
{| class="wikitable"
|+
!Address
!Size
!Description
!
|-
|0x0000 - 0x0023
|36 Bytes
|RAM
| rowspan="6" |4K systems
(minimal system, cannot load wozbasic)
|-
|0x0024 - 0x002B
|8 Bytes
|wozmon variables
|-
|0x002C - 0x00FF
|212 Bytes
|RAM
|-
|0x0100 - 0x01FF
|256 Bytes
|6502 processor stack
|-
|0x0200 - 0x027F
|128 Bytes
|wozmon keyboard input buffer
|-
|0x0280 - 0x0FFF
|3456 Bytes
|RAM
|-
|0x1000 - 0xC027
|
|Unused
|User expandable RAM / IO
|-
|0xC028
|1 Byte
|ACI port to write to cassette
|
|-
|0xC029 - 0xC0FF
|
|Unused
|User expandable RAM / IO
|-
|0xC100 - 0xC1FF
|256 Bytes
|ACI ROM
|When ACI card is inserted
|-
|0xC200 - 0xD00F
|
|Unused
|User expandable RAM / IO
|-
|0xD010 - 0xD013
|4 Bytes
|PIA (Peripheral Interface Adapter)
|Keyboard and Display
|-
|0xD014 - 0xDFFF
|
|Unused
|User expandable RAM / IO
|-
|0xE000 - 0xEFFF
|4Ki (4096 Bytes)
|RAM
|8K systems
(standard system, can load wozbasic)
|-
|0xF000 - 0xFEFF
|
|Unused
|User expandable RAM / IO
|-
|0xFF00 - 0xFFFF
|256 Bytes
|PROM (wozmon)
|Programmable read-only memory
|}
alt=A backlash character at the top-left of the screen and a blinking at sign character below it|thumb|208x208px|The Apple I system monitor ready prompt
Video and Input
The Apple I included built-in computer terminal circuitry with composite video output. To use the computer, a user-supplied composite monitor and ASCII-encoded keyboard needed to be connected. If a monitor was not available, a standard television set could be used along with an RF modulator. In comparison, competing machines generally required an expensive dedicated video display terminal or teletypewriter. This, combined with its single-board construction, made the Apple I an elegant and inexpensive machine for its day, though competitors such as the Sol-20 and Sphere 1 offered similar feature sets.
{{multiple image
| image1 = Apple I 2513.jpg
| alt1 = A close-up of the top-left portion of the Apple I motherboard. The chips are arranged in a grid. One chip is larger than the rest and is placed horizontally rather than vertically.
| caption1 = The large, horizontal chip on the top-left of the main board is the Signetics 2513 character generator.
| image2 = Signetics-2513.png
| alt2 = A table with four rows of 16 pixelated characters. There is no room for lowercase letters. The square bracket characters are noticeably thicker than the other symbols.
| caption2 = The Apple I character set
| direction = vertical
}}
The computer generated its video output using a shift register memory and a Signetics 2513 64×8×5 Character Generator. It was capable of displaying uppercase characters, numbers and basic punctuation and math symbols with a 5x8 pixel font:
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Apple Cassette Interface expansion
{{Listen image
| main_image = Apple Cassette Interface.jpg
| main_image_caption = The Apple Cassette Interface expansion card. There are two phone connector ports for reading and writing programs to a connected cassette deck.
| main_image_alt = A green circuit board with six chips in a row. There are two phone jacks in the top-left corner. A gold edge connector runs along the bottom of the board.
| filename = Apple Cassette Interface BASIC.wav
| title = Apple BASIC cassette tape
| description = This cassette tape was distributed with the Apple I. Playing this file into an Apple Cassette Interface will load Apple BASIC.
}}
A cassette interface was available in the form of an optional add-on for the Apple I's expansion slot. A cassette deck plugged in to the expansion's phone connector ports could be written to and read from as a form of removable storage. The only alternative to the interface for loading programs was typing machine code by hand, making the add-on "ubiquitous".
The expansion came with a free cassette tape containing Steve Wozniak's Integer BASIC interpreter. Other software tapes were supplied "at minimal cost" including ported video games such as Hamurabi, Lunar Lander and Star Trek.
Conservation
thumb|A running Apple I, with a keyboard and monitor connected, on display at LCM+L where guests were allowed to use it
Only about 200 Apple I boards were produced, and the whereabouts of 62 to 82 are known. After the success of the Apple II, and of Apple broadly, the Apple I was recognized as an important historical computer. According to the 1986 Apple IIe Owner's Guide, an Apple I was then worth "between $10,000 and $15,000" and a board was reportedly sold for $50,000 in 1999.
In November 2010, an Apple I with a cache of original documents and packaging sold for £133,250 ($) at Christie's auction house in London. The documents included the return label showing Steve Jobs's parents' address, a personally typed and signed letter from Jobs (answering technical questions about the computer), and the invoice (listing "Steven" as the salesman). The computer was brought to Polytechnic University of Turin for restoration.
In October 2014 the Henry Ford Museum purchased an Apple I at a Bonhams auction for . The sale included the keyboard, monitor, cassette decks and a manual. In 2017, an Apple I removed from Steve Jobs's office in 1985 by Apple quality control engineer Don Hutmacher was placed on display at Living Computers: Museum + Labs.
On May 30, 2015, an elderly woman reportedly dropped off boxes of electronics for disposal at an electronics recycling center in the Silicon Valley of Northern California. Included in the electronics (removed from her garage after the death of her husband) was an original Apple I computer, which the recycling firm sold for . When a discarded item is sold, it is the company's practice to give 50% of the proceeds to the original owner, but the woman has not been identified.
Apple I computers with original documents and memorabilia have frequently been auctioned for over $300,000 throughout the 2010s and 2020s. The production prototype for the Apple I survives in a badly damaged state and was itself auctioned in 2022 for $677,196. The validation prototype for the Apple I, which represented the final design of the PCB before mass production, survives fully intact and was sold at auction in 2026 for a record-breaking .
Replicas
Several Apple I clones and replicas have been released in recent years. These are created by hobbyists and marketed to the hobbyist/collector community. Availability is usually limited to small runs in response to demand.replica I – the apple I(c) clone , retrieved August 15, 2009replica I at official Briel computers web site, retrieved August 15, 2008 story with pictures for assembling a Briel replica I from a kit Retrieved December 1, 2022
Emulation
Emulation software for the Apple I has been written for modern home computersPom1 Apple 1 Emulator , retrieved July 17, 2013CocoaPom Apple 1 Emulator , retrieved July 17, 2013Sim6502 Apple I emulator retrieved July 17, 2013 and for web browsers. It has also been emulated on 1980s era computers including the SAM CoupéApple 1 Emulator - SAM Coupé , retrieved July 17, 2013 and Commodore 64.
See also
- Computer museum
- History of computer science
- History of computing
- KIM-1
Notes
References
Citations
{{Reflist
|refs =
<ref name=ScullInSteel>{{cite news
| url = http://www.scullinsteel.com/apple1/
| title = Apple 1js: An Apple 1 Emulator in JavaScript
| access-date = January 28, 2015
| archive-date = April 7, 2015
| archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20150407014704/http://www.scullinsteel.com/apple1/
| url-status = live
}}</ref>
<ref name=Cbc2015-05-31>{{cite news
|url = http://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/apple-1-computer-worth-200k-left-at-recycling-centre-1.3094519
|title = Apple 1 computer worth $200K left at recycling centre
|publisher = CBC News
|date = 2015-05-31
|access-date = 2015-05-31
|agency = Associated Press
|quote = A recycling centre in the Silicon Valley is looking for a woman who dropped off an old Apple computer that turned out to be a collectible item worth $200,000 US.
|archive-date = May 31, 2015
|archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20150531141711/http://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/apple-1-computer-worth-200k-left-at-recycling-centre-1.3094519
|url-status = live
}}</ref>
<ref name=Cbs2015-05-30>{{cite news
|url = http://sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com/2015/05/30/mystery-woman-dumps-rare-collectable-apple-computer-worth-200k-at-recycling-center/
|title = Mystery Woman Dumps Rare, Collectable Apple Computer Worth $200K At Recycling Center
|work = CBS News
|date = 2015-05-30
|location = Milpitas
|access-date = 2015-05-31
|archive-date = June 2, 2015
|archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20150602221843/http://sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com/2015/05/30/mystery-woman-dumps-rare-collectable-apple-computer-worth-200k-at-recycling-center/
|url-status = live
}}</ref>
}}
Sources
External links
- Apple I Owners Club
- Apple I Operational Manual (browse)
- German making-of article to recreate the Apple I Operational Manual
- Apple I project on www.sbprojects.com
- Apple 1 Computer Registry
- John Calande III blog – Building the Apple I clone, including corrections on the early history of Apple Computer
- Apple 1 | Cameron's Closet – includes display of the Apple 1's character set on real hardware, compared to on most emulators