30 years ago, the idea of having a computer in the comfort of your own home was only a dream. The very first computer systems were mainframes. huge room-filling computer systems that need to be kept in a temperature-controlled environment with trained professionals operating them.
In the early 1970's microprocessors changed everything. Computer circuits where taking to much time to produce because every transistor had to be individually soldered. A single chip, made way for smaller and faster machines.
The fist models were not very user friendly. The client would have to me proficient with a soldering iron to make everything go his way. The Altair 8800 was one of the earliest. It wasn't a very good machine. It did not have a keyboard, mainly consisted of a row of toggle switches which the user had to use to input programs. The display was just a row of flashing LEDs. The thing that made it important was the inspiration that other great minds took from this product which eventfully lead to evolution we know to day.
In 1976 the Apple 1 home computer was designed. This was the result effort of Steve Wozniak, Steve Jobs and Ron Wayne. It was developed in Steve Wozniak's bedroom. He built the printed circuit board while Ron Wayne wrote the operation manual. Jobs did what he knew best and that was advertising. With Job's determination he managed to get an order of 50 apple computers, which Wozniak had to hand-build. Al tough it seemed impossible at the time, Wozniak managed to build all of them second to the last day of the contract. They were not the full assembled computers but they got paid the cash and paid off the loans they had on the parts. This was all built in Job's garage which looking at it from today, was Apple's first company headquarters.
The computer's where being sold for $666.66. The machine was not intended to be pre-built with fully-assembled displays and attachments, but Job's persistence made it a reality. Wozniak built the Apple 1 to be run on BASIC, so games could be programmed and played on it. It was a game machine for the most part. The fact that games could be programmed on such a machine made it very popular and created a huge fuss on video game creation which eventually lead to computer's being the prime source of video game creation we use nowadays. The machine had a memory of 4KB running up to 48KB, and used 40 x 24 characters. At the time it was the fastest running system because it was the only one. The monitor did not display things as we know them today but displayed lines of code which the user had to input himself due to the fact that no mouse was invented at the time. The Apple 1 discontinued being built the next year and was replaced by the more user friendly Apple 2.
How the screen looked like back then.
The actual product sold.
The evolution of new products quickly emerged to what we know today, more than 30 years after with super advanced dedicated graphics card and amazing displays.A key component in our lives that some cannot simply live without.
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| A high-end gaming computer |
Bibliography:
Anthony, S. (2015). Original Apple I computer, sold by Steve Jobs in 1976, could reach $1 million at auction | ExtremeTech. [online] ExtremeTech. Available at: http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/193512-apple-i-computer-sold-personally-by-steve-jobs-in-1976-could-reach-1-million-at-auction [Accessed 6 May 2015].
Apple II History, (2008). 2-The Apple-1. [online] Available at: http://apple2history.org/history/ah02/ [Accessed 6 May 2015].
Applemuseum.bott.org, (2015). Apple I. [online] Available at: http://applemuseum.bott.org/sections/computers/a1.html [Accessed 6 May 2015].
Wikipedia, (2015). Apple I. [online] Available at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_I [Accessed 6 May 2015].
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