The $666 Board That Built Apple: How the Apple I Changed Computing 50 Years Ago

Amer­i­cans of a cer­tain age may well remem­ber grow­ing up with an Apple II in the class­room, and the per­pet­u­al temp­ta­tion it held out to play The Ore­gon Trail, Num­ber Munch­ers, or per­haps Lode Run­ner. More than a few recess gamers went on to com­put­er-ori­ent­ed careers, but only the most curi­ous sought an answer to the ques­tion implied in the machine’s name: was there an Apple I? Half a cen­tu­ry after the foun­da­tion of Apple, Inc., then known as Apple Com­put­er, the prod­uct that launched what’s now one of the world’s most valu­able com­pa­nies remains very much an obscu­ri­ty. Unless you fre­quent com­put­er muse­ums, you’re unlike­ly ever to have laid eyes on an Apple I, let alone used one. Even if one of the exist­ing mod­els were to come on the mar­ket, you’d need about half a mil­lion dol­lars to buy it.

It’s actu­al­ly eas­i­er to buy the parts that went into an Apple I and build it your­self — which, as demon­strat­ed by the 8‑Bit Guy in the video above, still isn’t easy at all. Yet it does con­vey some­thing of what Apple’s very first cus­tomers would have expe­ri­enced in 1976, when do-it-your­self was the order of the day in com­put­ing.

When I bought the Mac­Book on which I’m writ­ing this post, I sim­ply opened it up and, nat­u­ral­ly, found it ready to use. That would scarce­ly have been imag­in­able to com­put­er enthu­si­asts of the mid-sev­en­ties, accus­tomed as they were to sol­der­ing indi­vid­u­al­ly pur­chased chips onto elec­tron­ics boards by hand. The Apple I marked a great leap for­ward in con­ve­nience by com­ing already assem­bled, albeit with­out a mon­i­tor, a key­board, or even a case; the pur­chase price of USD $666.66 (clos­er to $4,000 today) just got you the board. But what a board.

Though we remem­ber Steve Jobs as the mas­ter­mind, the Apple I is a tour de force of the engi­neer­ing genius of his busi­ness part­ner Steve Woz­ni­ak. When the Steves debuted it at the Home­brew Com­put­er Club in July of 1976, the rel­a­tive­ly small num­ber of chips and advanced func­tions (BASIC pro­gram­ming! Cas­sette-tape data stor­age! Actu­al video out­put, if only of tele­type-like scrolling text!) cre­at­ed a con­sid­er­able demand then and there. We often hear of Jobs and Woz­ni­ak start­ing Apple in a garage, and it was in that garage (as well as the house­’s liv­ing room) that the first Apple I boards were put togeth­er. Ulti­mate­ly, 200 were sold before the Apple II arrived the fol­low­ing year. Apple’s first com­put­er may look intim­i­dat­ing to most of today’s Mac users. But con­sid­er the com­pa­ny’s rep­u­ta­tion for min­i­mal­ism, acces­si­bil­i­ty, and a knack for cap­tur­ing the con­sumer’s imag­i­na­tion: all qual­i­ties present on that board 50 years ago.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Rid­ley Scott on the Mak­ing of Apple’s Icon­ic “1984” Com­mer­cial, Aired on Super Bowl Sun­day in 1984

Before The Simp­sons, Matt Groen­ing Illus­trat­ed a “Student’s Guide” for Apple Com­put­ers (1989)

Hunter S. Thompson’s Edgy 1990s Com­mer­cial for Apple’s Mac­in­tosh Com­put­er: A Med­i­ta­tion on Pow­er

Dis­cov­ered: The User Man­u­al for the Old­est Sur­viv­ing Com­put­er in the World

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. He’s the author of the newslet­ter Books on Cities as well as the books 한국 요약 금지 (No Sum­ma­riz­ing Korea) and Kore­an Newtro. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.