In observance of the national Independence Day holiday, both Connecting Point locations (Bend and Medford, Oregon) will be closed Friday, July 4th.
Enjoy the long weekend, and please take care of yourselves! Remember we’re in Fire Season, conditions are tinder-dry, and temps will likely be high. Be very careful with matches, fires, and (especially) fireworks.
We’ll be open for business as usual Saturday morning.
Image credit: Wired.com
The first Apple computer was a kit. These early versions were hand-built by Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak, and first shown publicly at meetings of the Homebrew Computer Club. This club was an informal, Silicon Valley-based group of electronic enthusiasts and technically-inclined hobbyists. In other words, nerds – über nerds, with a number of infamous hackers and future entrepreneurs among its members.
Apple I creator Steve Wozniak
The Apple I was essentially a motherboard, with CPU, RAM, and basic text/video chips on a single board (see above). You had to build your own enclosure, and provide your own keyboard and monitor. But it was a fully functioning system on a single circuit board, it was reasonably affordable – and that was a breakthrough at the time. Apple had incorporated a few months earlier (on April 1st), but this was their first product to make it to market.
[A side note: A little over a year later, Connecting Point – then known as TEAM Electronics, on E Street in Grants Pass – would become one of the very first retailers in the world to sell and service the newly-introduced Apple II – launching a decades-long partnership between the two companies that persists to this day.]
Its $666.66 price tag works out to about $2,800 in 2014 dollars, adjusting for inflation – which may seem a bit steep for such a rudimentary device. But recent auctions have seen original Apple I’s selling for as much as $50,000. They’re extremely rare, and an important part of computing history. The Apple I paved the way for the revolution to come.
So check your attic. Scour your garage. Look under the bench in your cellar workshop. You may be sitting on a goldmine.
