Vintage Apple-1 computer purchase letter more than 20 years old found

Bugbooks

I lost track of the original letter from Adam Schoolsky describing my purchase of his Apple-1 computer.  Adam received his Apple-1 40 years ago as a gift from Steve Wozniak (Woz). Adam was a friend of Woz and helped with the Zaltair prank at the first West Cost Computer Faire in 1977.

The move of the Bugbook Computer Museum vintage computer collection to the Computer Museum of America has given me an opportunity to look into the 40 plus cartons of papers and teaching material I packed up when retiring from my faculty position at Virginia Tech.  My last year of teaching "Instrumentation and Automation" was 1996.  I was on sabbatical leave for two more years doing various research projects and retired in 1998 with 31 years as a tenured faculty member.

It is hard for me think back when I actually started to collect vintage electronic items. The reality is I was collecting some interesting vintage electronic items even in my college days at Oregon State University.  Wow that was 1959 to 1963. However I always give the date of starting my serious collection as 1971 - the same year as the introduction of the first commercial microprocessor. I had been teaching Analog and Digital Electronics for 4 years at that time and the microprocessor changed my life big time just like many other people involved in electronic technology.


Click on photo to enlarge

Adam Schoolsky Apple-1 letter

Apple-1 computer letter.

I have looked and wonderrd for years where this original letter from Adam Schoolsky was and I found it in with a box of teaching notes from a Digital Electronics class packed away for 20 years. Why and how it was in there? I don't know however I am glad to have and add it to the items with my original Schoolsky Apple-1 computer purchased in 1994.

Coming in April the Vintage Computer Fair SE  

 in Roswell, GA. I will be giving a little talk about my vintage computer collection - hope to see you there.

David Larsen 1969

The items in storage from my teaching days at Virginia Tech (VT) are mostly old teaching notes, photo slides, overhead projector lecture transparencies,  old photographs, some really interesting letters and lot of memorabilia.

Here is photo of me teaching computer interfacing using a PDP8-L minicomputer and overhead projector in about 1969. I think this very computer and teletype is the one I shipped to the Computer Museum of America.  Most old equipment was just tossed into the junk heap when it was well past being useful to anyone and I did a little dumpster diving and salvaged the system.

Just reminiscing in looking at this photo reminds me  how much technology has changed. I was using an overhead projector and now we would use a projector and power point presentation that could include video and audio and even a live feed from the internet. WOW it would have been fun to teach using current technology however we did just fine with what was available at that time.

David Larsen's VT office packed 20 years ago

This is just 25 of the 45 boxes from my old VT office packed 20 years ago. How could I have so much stuff in one office. I guess I was lucky to have a big office with lots of book shelves. Much of the material in these boxes is teaching notes,letters - (we did not have email for most of my tenure at VT), books and reference material and was stored in my teaching laboratory and not actually in my office.

So far I have only looked though 6 boxes and the best surprise so far is the Adam Schoolsky letter. I know there are other jewels in these boxes. I report more later.

Schoolsky Apple-1 computer

Here is another original hand written letter shipped with the Schoolsky Apple-1 computer.

Adam Schoolsky also gave me a mint copy of the 40 page  1977 West Coast Computer Faire program. Very interesting reading "View Click" 
- look at the price of memory and other computer items in 1977.

Bugbooks 1 & 2

One more nice find in the office box's was this set of first edition Bugbooks 1 & 2. We self published these and had them printed in our hometown of Blackburg, Virginia 1974.

This is where the name for my museum came from - these early Bugbooks.

David Larsen

I will continue to look though all 45 box's and making an inventory - then I will know if any item worth while is in one of the box's.

 ^{"by David Larsen"  KK4WW Computer Collector Historian}     Send Message    Like us on Facebook  My Blog about hometown Floyd VA

Vintage Zaltair Computer that never was - One of Steve Woznaik's best pranks

Bugbooks

The Zaltair computer was not a real computer but a prank that Steve Wozniak and some of his friends made up and secretly distributed at the First West Coast Computer Faire April 15-17, 1977.



I am fortunate to have an original of the Zaltair brochure. I received this brochure from Adam Schoolsky as part of a package of material with the Apple 1 computer purchased from Adam in 1995. Adam helped Wozniak with this prank. The brochure was a prank using the most popular computer on the market - the "Altair 8800" microcomputer sold by MITS, Ed Roberts company. See the comment below blog for additional information.


                   Enlarge the photo's by clicking on them and then even more by a right click and select "View image".

Zaltair brochure Front

 Zaltair brochure Back

 It is reported that this may be the only backside image of the Zaltair brochure on the the internet.

Much of this information I obtained from Steve Wozniak's book "iWoz"

Wozniak book

 "Zaltair Computer"      A really great practical joke that Steve Wozniak ( designer of the Apple 1 Microcomputer ) pulled of at the First West Coast Computer Faire in April 1977.  Steve says in his book "IWoz" that he likes to do practical jokes and have someone else get blamed for doing the joke. In the case of the Zaltair he did a very good job and did not get accused of being the originator of the joke in fact Gary Ingram at Processor Technology was the one accursed of doing the hoax. The hoax was directed toward the Ed Roberts and his Mitts Altair 8800 microcomputer.
Steve called his friend Adam Schoolsky to come help with this hoax. Adam and Steve created the Zaltair handout and printed 8,000 or more of them for $400.  They called in Chris Espinoza and Randy Wiggington -- a couple of teenage friends to help distribute the brochure. Steve told them all that no matter what, they could not admit the hoax to any one.
They started by putting a good number of them out on a table where many vendors were displaying literature. It was discovered that they  disappeared very fast so they watched and saw a representative from the Mitts Altair Company was taking them all.  It was clear a much more secret way to put them out would be needed.  At this point they started to carry them around under their coat and put a few here and there usually putting them a few down in someone else's stack of literature.  When Steve Jobs first saw the Zaltair brochure he thought it was real and made the comment that the Apple 2 did not look to bad compared to the other computers. Apple 1 designer Steve Wozniak.


It was a number of years later that Steve Wozniak admitted to Steve Jobs and Mike Scott that he was the one responsible for the Zaltair hoax.  They had a good  laugh  about the whole thing.
I really enjoyed the book "iWoz" and liked the idea that Steve always looked out for folks he was friends  with or worked with -- like selling some of his stock to about 40 engineers at Apple for a price he new would make them a lot of money when the company went public. He also gave a reported million dollars to several friends who had helped him in the early days of Apple but were not in on the good buy like the engineers at Apple.
This material is based on  information from Steve Wozniak,s book  "iWoz: Computer Geek to Cult Icon: How I Invented the Personal Computer, Co-Founded Apple, and Had Fun Doing It"

From Book "Digital Deli"

 Adam Schoolsky letter

                                          Video about Zaltair I made several years ago.'CLICK'

David Larsen

David's Company

This blog has been fun to write and brings back some good memories of my collection and being able to obtain several Apple 1 computers in the 90's. I am always amazed at just what I will find when I look at 40 years of computer collecting in the museum warehouse inventory . Looking for a letter and response I sent to Soviet President Gorbachev  in 1990 I spotted a Volksmodem made by Anchor Automation in the late 70's. It is mint and in original box never used - WOW the good old day's of 300 Baud data rates.
    

                            "by David Larsen"  ^{KK4WW Computer Collector Historian}   
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