New Delhi: An original Apple computer, hand-built in 1976 by Apple Computer founders Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak, sold for $400,000 at an auction held in the United States on Tuesday, November 9. The first Apple-1 computer was sold in 1976 for $666.66.
When the computer was put up for auction in California, it was expected to fetch up to $600,000, AFP reported.
In 1975, Jobs and Wozniak opened a shop in Jobs’s parents’ garage. The shop was dubbed Enterprise Apple. He began working on the prototype for the Apple-1, one of 200 devices he built at the beginning of the Apple Computer.
Unique design of the Apple-1 computer
The Apple-1 computer sold at a California auction is unique because it is made of koa wood. Koa wood is a richly petrified wood native to Hawaii, and only a handful of the original 200 prototypes were built using this wood.
Most of the 200 prototypes of the Apple-1 built by Jobs and Wozniak were sold as component parts. The Apple-1s came in the form of a motherboard. Case, keyboard and monitor sold separately.
Auction house John Moran Auctions said a computer store named Byte Shop took delivery of about 50 units and decided to keep some of the computers in the wood.
The Bite Shop in Mountain View, California was the first store to sell Apple products.
Apple-1 expert Corey Cohen told the Los Angeles Times before bidding that the Apple-1 is a kind of holy grail for vintage electronics and computer tech collectors.
Cohen also said that many people want to know what kind of person collects Apple-1 computers, and it’s not just people in the tech industry.
still in working mode
The Apple-1 computer was sold with the 1986 Panasonic video monitor. According to John Moran Auctioneers, the device had only two owners.
A listing on the auction house’s website states that the device was originally purchased by an electronics professor at Chaffee College in Rancho Cucamonga, California.
That’s why the computer is called Chaffee College Apple-1. It is still in working mode.
Chaffee sold a computer to a student for $650 so that the student could buy an Apple-2 computer.
The name of the student has not been disclosed.
Auction company Bonhams previously sold a working Apple-1 in 2014 for more than $900,000.
The Apple-1 was the first Apple product to be sold and marked the debut of the tech giant, which is now worth $2 trillion. Also, it was the first personal computer that came with a warranty.
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