Vintage computers - The Hunt for Apple-1 computers - 2/29/16

(Updated 2/29/16) I am ask many times how did you build your computer collection.  A real help for

Apple 1 Computer

Bugbooks

the microcomputer memorabilia collection was - I was teaching  digital electronics and computer automation & instrumentation before the first Intel microprocessor was introduced in 1971.  My period of teaching at Virginia Tech was 1967 to 1998.  A good part of the answer is "I was at the right place at the right time".  The majority of my collection was acquired  from 1975 to 1995. During that time the computers were generally of little or no value and the owners just dumped them in the trash. Many were happy to find a crazy guy like me that actually wanted to keep an old computer.

I advertised in various publications for most of the 45 years . The one that brought in the most calls was a small classified ad in "Computer Shopper". The ad was very simple and looked like this - Wanted pre1980 microcomputers for historical collection". Over the years I recieved 1000's of calls or offers for microcomputers. I continue to run an ad in the Ham Radio magazine "QST"

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Here are a few of the responses with offers for Apple-1 computers.

Craig Solomonson offered me this Apple-1 computer July 1996 for his price of less then $40,000.

WOW I sure missed a computer that made the big time - Auction at Breker Nov 28, 2010 - Yes, Italian collector Marco Boglione paid $212,000 for a 34-year-old Apple-1

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Craig Solomonson  Apple 1

The information below is from the Apple-1 Registry 

NTI logo. This computer was first Frank Anderson. 

Next it was  purchased from Frank Anderson, an electronic dealer in Great Falls, Montana by Craig Solomonson for MECC.  Craig reports that this computer was sold by Jobs and shipped from his parents address. Woz seemed a bit confused when Craig showed him the invoice and asked about it. He said "Not sold by us, although Job's may have sold it without telling me." 

• Sold by Craig to Jesse Sackman in California
• $50,000 unit sold in Ebay auction 320447681957, late in 2009
• This is the unit auctioned by Christies in London for 133,250 pounds in November of 2010 to Italian businessman and private collector Marco Boglione

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During the 80/90's I was offered about 10 Apple-1 computers and managed to purchase 4 of them. One offer was for me trade a new automobile van for his computer. This was a reasonable offer but I declined the purchase at the time as too complex. I heard later that some other collector made this trade.


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Schoolsky Apple 1

Schoolsky Apple-1 Computer

I did purchase this Apple-1 Microcomputer from Adam Schoolsky & you can see in the letter many other nice items as well. Here is a video about this computer in our "Bugbook Historical Microcomputer Museum" 'CLICK'

Schoolsky's Apple-1  came in a box like these shown in Job's bedroom. The box has Woz written on the top. I will never know but Schoolsky's computer may be in this photo.

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This computer has been made fully operational by Win Heagy in late 2015 and has been passed on to the Lonnie Mimms collection at the Computer Museum of America.

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Forest Duston phone log

Forest Duston Apple-1 computer 

I  keep a  phone log of all the calls about computers that are available. The photo to the left is copy of call from Forest and he told me he had 2 Apple 1 computers. I was skeptical about that however over the next year I found it was true and purchased both of them. It was fortunate for me and he got his price. 

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Snyder Apple-1 computer 

This Apple-1 computer offered to me by the law firm for $15,000 was a great offer. Unfortunately at that time I was not able to make  a deal.  I don't know who  ended up with Apple-1. The computer had an interesting history and original letter from Steve Jobs with it.  Even lawyers seemed find my little classified advertising.  

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Apple 1 purchase from John Burch

Here is a video of  Apple-1 I purchased  from John Burch in the mid 90's. It was a simple deal - he told me most of the collectors wanted him to just give the computer to them. He gave me a price and we had a deal.





Video of this computer has had nearly 250,000 views during the past 5 years "CLICK here to see video"


Click on photos to enlarge

David Larsen working on Apple 1

This is one of the finest examples of an Apple-1 computer and in January 2016 was passed on to the Lonnie Mimms collection at the Computer Museum of America in Roswell, Georgia.

Here I am working on the "John Burch"  Apple-1 computer.

Apple 1 computer documentaion

I received lots of great original documentation with this computer.

Here is a little tidbit about Steve Jobs house and where and who designed the Apple-1 & 2 .
(Steve Wozniak designed them independent on his own)

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My 45 years of collecting effort resulting of an inventory of more then 10,000 microcomputer memorabilia items in moving to Lonnie Mimms Computer Museum of America. All the items have been packed. Packing took 10 days with a crew of 3 to 6 and as I write this update the last 500 or more packed boxes will leave the Bugbook Computer Museum warehouse today.  2/29/16

David Larsen

The hunt for computers during the past 45 years has been fun. Now my family and friends ask - What are you going to do with them. We have inventored more then 10,000 items in our collection and still have more to add to the data base - lots of computers and memorabilia. I have set up a small museum and hope to have an endowed museum here in Floyd Va - place  the computers with the other museums or with serious collectors before I move to Heaven. I am 75 now and only have 25 more years to go - Any ideas for my collection - give me a call.

I am 77+ as I update this blog and happy to say I have found a wonderful home for the 45 years of collecting. It is a delight to be working with Lonnie Mimms and his Computer Museum of America in Roswell, Georgia. Dave

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

Apple-1 computers annual inspection & Apple-1 computer at auction.

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Fridays are always interesting working with Grayson Van Beuren. Grayson visits the museum Friday,s as part of his Graduate Independent Study project. This week we brought the Apple 1 computers from the bank vault to the museum for an annual inspection. Apple-1 at auction next month -- see story at end of blog.

Click on photo to enlarge 

Apple 1 Computer 

Grayson giving an Apple-1 a good visual exam. The Apple 1 computers were operational the last time they were powered up however we have no reason apply power for each annual inspection. It will be an easy task to make them operational when needed. The logic of the computer is not complex and problems are easy to repair.  Steve Wozniak's design of the Apple 1 uses a minimum of IC chips. A very clever design.

Apple 1 Computer

Grayson and I gave all four Apple-1 computers a good inspection and found them continue to be in excellent condition.  These computers are on Mike Willegal's "Apple 1 Registry" as numbers 13,22,42, & 55 in the Registry list "Summary of Apple 1s".

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Bob Luther's Apple-1 and Ron Wayne's proofs of Apple documents to be sold at Christie's Auction December 11,2014.

LR- Ron Wayne & Steve Wozniak - credit Bob Luther

Ron Wayne & Steve Wozniak , Apple's remaining co-founders, met Monday November 17th 2014 to talk about the growing interest in Apple memorabilia.  Ron Wayne was one of the original 3 owners of the Apple Company. Ron sold his 10 percent interest in the company for about $800 12 days after the owners agreements were signed. The Ron Wayne story is not generally known by the public.

Bob Luther arranged this meeting  to help Wayne sell his original Apple working proofs . These proofs and Bob Luther's Apple-1 will be sold by Christie's Auction December 11, 2014. You can see part Ron Wayne's interview in Bob Luther's Book "the First Apple" in my blog.

Here is interesting video of Ron Wayne telling how he was involved in the founding of the Apple Computer company.
                   

David Larsen

Christie's auction of Bob Luthers  Apple-1 computer and Ron Wayne's working proofs is only 50 days after Bonham's auction of an Apple-1 computer for $905,000 This will be interesting - what is your prediction of the selling price ??

.^{"by David Larsen"  KK4WW Computer Collector Historian}   
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Vintage - Apple-1 Computer Clone operational at the "Bugbook Historical Microcomputer Museum"

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NEWS FLASH - Bob Luther is selling his "First Apple 1 Computer"  December 11,2014 at Christie's Auction.  Sold for $365,000
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Apple 1 clone display 

Apple-1 clone is operational and running programs just fine here in our museum. Grayson Van Beuren as part of his Graduate Independent Studies at Virginia Tech (VT) has been helping with interactive operational retro computers. This week the Apple 1 clone was tested and executes programs just fine. Grayson comes  to the museum every Friday for a several hours in the afternoon and we work together on projects for his studies. He is a very enthusiastic and a joy for me to spend time with in the museum. The museum is about a 50 minute drive from the VT campus and this study project takes up a lot of his Friday's.

Grayson Van Beuren

Grayson loading cassette Basic into the Apple-1. Basic loads fine using this old Walkman cassette player.


Grayson usually takes a vintage computer back to campus and works from home some Friday's. This is good use of his time and reduces his travel time to Floyd.

Running Apple 1 Basic 

The computer executes Basic just fine and is a popular display for our museum visitors.
Brandon Cholodenko assembled this Apple-1 clone for our museum by  starting with the Mimeo Apple-1 PC board from Mike Willegal. Brandon assembling of the Apple clone was great - it worked perfectly out of the box. 
This  Mimeo Apple-1 is just the ticket to get our original Apple-1 operational. The same power transformers and keyboard can be used operating the original Apple 1's.

                                              Operational Apple 1 Clone Computer

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It was a busy Friday for Gayson with a visit to the museum warehouse on the trip back to VT.

Grayson in Computer  Museum Warehouse

Grayson and a view inside the warehouse.  The warehouse contains 10,000 items  all entered on the professional museum software "Past Perfect". It has taken at least 5 years of intermittent work to get the inventory cataloged and entered into our collection database. The 10,000 items represent my 45 years of collecting and includes various computer memorabilia. I thank my summer student interns for entering most of data into "Past Perfect".

Grayson Van  Beuren & Apple Lisa computer

Grayson inspecting the Apple section of the warehouse looking at several Lisa computers.

The museum original Apple-1 computers are not in the warehouse. They are stored in the local commercial bank vault. I would not even trust having them at home. The house could burn down and they would be gone for good. The bank seems to be the best solution for storing safely.

Grayson Van Beuren with Core Memory

Grayson inspects a core memory stack.  This core 18 boards with 18 X 18 bit words. This is a total of 326 18 bit words of core memory. I really hugh box for so few words - yep really big cores. This demonstration memory module was donated to our museum by Dr. Thomas Haddock author of  "A Collector's Guide to Personal Computers and Pocket Calculators" you will find this book listed in our books for collectors.

David Larsen

The curators here at the museum always look forward to working with Grayson. We are all learning new things from this independent study project.

.^{"by David Larsen"  KK4WW Computer Collector Historian}   
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Apple-1 Computer for sale Dec 11 - Bob Luther author of "The First Apple" interviews of people from start up days of Apple Computer

LR, Bob Luther & David Larsen

Apple-1 Computer For Sale
NEWS FLASH - Bob Luther is selling his "First Apple-1 Computer"  December 11,2014 at Christie's Auction. Sold for $365,000 !
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My wife and I had the pleasure of an 8 day cruise up the East Coast and this gave me time for reading. I read "The First Apple" by Bob Luther for the second time.

"The First Apple" by Bob Luther

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Most of the people he included were involved in the start up of the Apple Computer Company.  I found reading these interviews very interesting and I learned a lot more about the early days of the Apple Company. The folks Bob interviewed had great bits of information and stories to share.

If you have an interest in any of the people in this list below "The First Apple" book is the place to read a current interview in their own words. A lot of good reading with about 300 pages of interviews.

  

   Bob Luther tells you in his own voice what inspired him to write his book "the first Apple"

Allen Baum     (I have included a few excerpts of  interviews below with permission of Bob Luther.)

Mario Boglioni

Joey Copson

Rick Crandall

Bill Fernandez

Elizabeth Holmes

Dick Huston

Federico Ini

Sallam Ismail

Steve Jobs

Dan Kottke

Dave Larsen

Liza Loop

Lonnie Mimms

Neil Goldberg

Owen O’Mahony

Jef Raskin

Charles Ricketts

Wendell Sander

Risley Sams

Adam Schoolsky

Mike Scott

Dan Sokol

Craig Solomonson

Paul Terrell

Bruce Waldack

David Waldack

Ron Wayne

Randy Wigginton

Mike Willegal

Steve Wozniak 

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Excerpts from Ron Wayne interview - Ron was one of the 3 original owners of the Apple Company. 

PG 117-118

Ron Wayne

Bob- Did you leave before they started making the Apple-1?

Ron Wayne- I backed out of the situation twelve days after I drew up the contract. So I was never really involved in the workings of the whole Apple enterprise. I’ve been the ‘unknown founder” for decades.

I’ve had many vocations in my life, failing at each. I’ll put it to you this way. I’ve never been rich, but I’ve never been hungry either. And I’ve done a lot of fun stuff, and pursued many interesting things in my lifetime.

I’m absolutely convinced that I’ll go down as a footnote in history, literally because I happened to have known someone. Steve Jobs’ name will ring through the corridors of time. He’s had a very phenomenal, very productive, and very dominant life of activity in the computer world.

PG 120

It seems I made a very foolish mistake many years ago, roughly twenty years ago. I ran across an ad that somebody was running a guy who deals in famous autographs. And I’m thinking to myself, look…I’ve got this contract sitting in a filing cabinet collecting dust. Maybe I can turn this into some money, which at the time I could use. So I got in touch with the guy, and we negotiated, and that contract was sold to him for five hundred dollars. And you know what happened to that contract?

Bob- It sold at auction for one $1,500,000.

Ron- Now you got it. I’ve always been a day late and a dollar short.

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Excerpts From interview with Adam Schoolsky a friend of Wozniak in the very early days of Apple. Adam tells about the Zaltair Computer spoof he and Wozniak did at the First West Coast Computer Fair in 1977 - The Computer that never was. I was fortunate to purchase and Apple-1 computer from Adam in 1995.

PG 258-259

Bob- In terms of the fair, did they need some help maintaining the booth? How did you

Adam Schoolsky

come about participating in that?

Adam- Steve and I had done those Zaltair brochures for that thing. I did help out in the booth. I think I was there mostly to check things out, and to distribute Zaltair brochures.

Bob- Was the Zaltair prank something you and Steve had planned out much in advance?

Adam- What we did was, I’d gone to his apartment a few weeks in advance, and we basically hashed the thing out. So that it would be untraceable. I went to a printing place in LA, and I had them typeset it and print it. They printed several huge boxes of them. We had them printed in four really bright colors. And I printed thousands of these. Then I went to another place, and I had them print envelopes, because we were going to mail them out. Steve paid for it, and I just shipped this stuff up to him on PSA. You know, you used to be able to air freight. I’d go to PSA and ship all of them, twenty dollars or whatever to ship all of them up there by air freight.

Bob- What was the thinking behind doing this? It was just a goof or something?

Adam- The Altair was the popular computer at the time. So what we did was to screw with them. The Apple ll was coming out, and it had capabilities that nothing else had. One of the things on the Zaltair flier was a chart – it was pretty funny – and it had these totally meaningless benchmarks. It had all of the current competitors of Altair; Apple, Processor Technology, and Sphere, and whoever else we put on there. And it had benchmarks features like speed, numbers that were totally meaningless. Of course, everything for the Zaltari was like, 1.0 or whatever, and then all the others are like 0.5. But they didn't relate to anything. Anyway, that was pretty funny. One of the ones we did, we just put ‘Apple.’ It didn't say ‘Apple-1’ or ‘Applell‘ it was just ‘Apple.’ And, of course, for Apple, which was the Apple-1, we just put really low numbers. Because we knew the Apple ll was coming out, which was going to be way better than the Apple-1.

Anyway, we’d take stacks of these things and dump them on the literature table. All these companies had tables, and they’d put literature out. So we’d put stacks of these brochures out, and go by, see that the stack was gone, and we’d go and put out another pile. There were like fifteen thousand of these things. They had one or two of them up- It was a riot!- in the MITs booth, on the wall, and they’d written on them in black magic marker ‘FRAUD!’ It was pretty funny. Yeah, it was good.

View Copy of original Zaltair Brochure "CLICK"

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Randy Wigginton was Apple employee #6 and worked at Apple for 9 years. I was specially interested in this interview because Randy mentions his brother built some cases for the Apple-1 computer and I have been trying to find out who built the case for my Apple-1 - I still do not know for sure.

PG 69

Randy Wigginton

Bob- Your involvement with Apple from the beginning is one of those things that turned out to be a good happenstance, in your case.

Randy- Well think about it, I mean most everything is sort of happenstance. Really we don’t control much of our own fate.

Bob - How long did you work at Apple?

Randy- Basically up through 1985. For nine years or so.

Bob- Do you have good memories about the Apple-1 or the very early days?

Randy- Oh, God, there were so many. People always say they joined the company in the garage stage. Well, I joined in the couch stage. We weren't big enough for the garage yet. We were on the couch, you know. It eventually moved over to Jobs’ garage and building stuff there. My brother built some of the original cases for the Apple-1’s. Everything was very mom and pop. When the company became real, we rented office space.

Bob- The third founder, Ron Wayne, was there for a very short time. When you joined, was he already gone?

Randy- Well, I met him. But Apple was incorporated twice. They incorporated once in early ’76. Ron was never part of the second incorporation of Apple. He was still around, but he never really did that much. You know, I mean he drew some diagrams and wrote up some documentation, but that was kind of it.

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Read the book for 299 pages of  31 current interviews involving early  Apple history.

David Larsen

I enjoyed the second reading of Bob Luther's book and the interviews provided various views about the early days of Apple.

^{"by David Larsen"  KK4WW Computer Collector Historian}   
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Apple-1 computer brings record price at auction of $905,000 - Bonhams auction

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NEWS FLASH - Bob Luther is selling his "First Apple-1 Computer"  December 11,2014 at Christie's Auction.  Sold for $365,000 !

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Working 1976 model sells at Bonhams' History of Science sale          

The Apple-1 computer designed by Steve Wozniak - Only 200 were manufactured and sold in 1976/77. About 40 are known to still exist in museums and private collections. The $905,000 price is a record for this highly desirable museum collectible. The previous high price was set by the Breker auction company in Germany -  Apple-1 sold for $671,400 in 2013.

Apple 1 computer 

The Apple-1 was not very popular because it was only a computer-on-a-board and the user had to add a keyboard, power transformers, &  display. Steve Wozniak realized he needed a more user friendly computer & started to design the Apple ll long before all the Apple-1's were sold.  The Apple Company took back many of the Apple-1 computers as a trade in for the much better Apple-ll .

Steve Jobs sold his VW and Steve Wozniak sold his HP calculator to start there Apple business.The Apple Company may not have succeed if Steve Jobs had not been successful in selling the first 50 Apple-1 computers to Paul Terrell for sale in his Byte Shop computer stores This $25,000 sale was the financing needed to get Apple started. It was not easy for the Steve's to interest investors to provide start up funds. One person approached was Stan Veit owner of the first computer store on the East Coast.  Jobs offered a 10 percent ownership of the Apple Company if Stan would invest $10,000. Stan turned the offer down with the idea that his money was better used in his own "Computer Mart" in New York. The interesting stories about the Apple-1 and the start of the Apple company by Steve Wozniak and Steve Jobs are endless & the Apple-1 computer started what is now one of the most successful businesses in the world.  

The Henry Ford organization was the buyer (reported Reuters) , which plans to display the computer in its museum in Dearborn, Michigan.

Apple 1 sold at auction 

Bonhams auction house had suggested the Apple-1 would bring $300,000 to $500,000.  It was reported that more than 100 bidders participated to set the record price of $905,000.

Bonhams video of the Apple-1 computer. "CLICK"

David Larsen.

The Apple-1 computer continues to bring record prices and is  a unique microcomputer . Some are predicting prices of over a million $ by the end of 2016. This is very speculative as many factors affect the price of collectibles. This price does look very good for a group of investors who purchased an Apple-1 computer several years ago for over $300,000.  

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

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Vintage computers - "iWoz" Steve Wozniak's book by Wozniak & Smith - My comments - a good read

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Anyone having an interest in the Apple Computer company and how it all started will really enjoy this book. Steve's book has been in print for 8 years - if you missed it now is a good time do your read. Their are many reasons for the tremendous success of Apple however it all started with Steve Wozniak

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designing the Apple 1 microcomputer.  Their were many good breaks as the company developed and sometimes just being in the right place at the right time was a big help. Steve Jobs convinced Wozniak to sell his Apple 1 computer and was the marketing guru that made the company grow to what it is today and those first months of the start up are very interesting.

Did you know that the first partnership of the Apple company included 3 people not just the 2 Steve's. Ron Wayne was in on the  original official founding and actually is the one who wrote the partnership agreement and at that time owned 10 percent of the Apple company? Only 12 days after the partnership Ron dropped out and received about $800 for his interest. CNN story about Ron Wayne.

Wozniak as Woz

Steve Wozniak ( Steve often goes by just Woz ) designed the Apple 1 and Apple ll totally on his own and also wrote the initial software monitor and Basic program.  Steve was and is a very smart and clever designer.  Woz wanted to give the plans of the Apple 1 for free and in fact did so at Homebrew Computer Club meetings. Of course without the Apple 1 their would be no Apple Company today.

The first sale made by Steve Jobs was just a few days after the original partnership was signed and he sold 50 Apple 1's to Paul Terrell owner of Byte Shop. It could be that without this sale their would be no Apple Computer Company today.

Zaltair computer - steve wozniak

 "Zaltair Computer"      A really great practical joke that Steve Wozniak  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.

More about the Zaltair.




   Woz with Apple 1

Photo by Dan Sokol

I recommend reading the book to learn in Woz's words about the start up of the Apple company and his own story. It is worth a second read if you like history and these fascinating story's told by Woz. The book "iWoz" published in 2006 and was on the New York Times best seller list.

David Larsen

I had the opportunity to read this book for a second time and I learned many new interesting story's  about Wozniak and the Apple Computer Company - a good read

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