Replica 1 plus Users Manual Chapter 1: A brief History of the Apple 1 Steve Wozniak had designed and built many different little projects before the Apple 1 computer. The Apple 1 was not even his first computer design. He had designed the “cream soda computer” long before the Apple 1. He had even designed a TV terminal that could be hooked up to a mainframe computer using a keyboard and your TV as the display. Of course he also built the infamous “blue box” so people could phone phreak and make free long distance calls. It wasn’t until Woz decided to combine two projects, and make one complete computer never seen on the market before.
He designed a single board computer and combined his TV terminal to create what is today known as the Apple 1 Computer. He first presented the project to the Homebrew Computer Club and it was well received. At that time, the only major computer out there was the Altair 8800 and that only came with LED’s and switches. The Apple 1 had a keyboard and a monitor. When he showed this to his friend Steve Jobs, Jobs was excited and immediately wanted to make more to sell. Figure 1: Actual Apple 1 Computer In April 1976, Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak decided to start Apple Computer Company.
It was based on a computer design that Wozniak had completed making a computer that could display text on a TV and use a keyboard without any additional boards. One board could do all of this. While it wasn’t the first home computer, it was the first to give you all of these features on one board without any addition hardware. No entering code by flipping switches and looking at LED’s. You could actually sit down at a table and type code into the computer using a standard keyboard. Steve Jobs saw something great in this project and was eager to start selling these boards.
Woz distributed schematics and source code listings for the Apple 1 computer at the Homebrew Computer Club meetings in Northern California bay area. Steve Jobs knew that there was enough interest in the boards at the Homebrew club to sell boards to the members. 200 boards were printed and most of them were assembled but not all of them. They assembled boards at night in Job’s parents’ garage and sold some to the Homebrew Club. It wasn’t until a local computer store purchased $50,000 worth of boards that anything significant had happened. After that, things changed. © Briel Computers 2014 page 6