One of the most consequential developments in the history of computing happened 50 years ago. It set Apple on course to becoming one of the most valuable companies on the planet and changed the face of computing in unfathomable ways. Yet, you’ve probably never even heard of what went down. It’s an often-overlooked moment that had incredible consequences for years to come.
Typing on a computer is something we all take for granted. One of Apple’s key philosophies has long been to get the technology out of your way–Steve Jobs and Jony Ive have waxed lyrical on that idea–so day to day, we never really think much about how writing on a computer actually works.
We can debate the pros and cons of various displays and even build our own custom mechanical keyboards to tune the experience to our liking. But the fundamental concept of typing on a keyboard and see the characters appear on your screen in front of you is something that is rarely questioned.
It wasn’t always this way. Back in the early 1970s, the idea that a person could sit down in their own home with an affordable computer that fit on their desk and type characters that were reflected on a connected display felt pretty much incomprehensible to most people.
The Altair 8800 is credited with being the first personal computer, but its user interface was anything but “personal.”
Todd Daily/WIkipedia
At the time, most computers were several orders of magnitude larger than today’s Macs, with the majority of them confined to research labs and secure facilities. A handful of “personal computers” had been created, like the Altair 8800 in 1974, but their Byzantine operations were farcically difficult to use (the Altair, for its part, required flipping switches and then interpreting the confusing light patterns produced by the device). You had to solder everything together yourself, and even when you were finished, you still couldn’t do much.
But at the same time as the Altair was making waves in the computing community, two people were working on something far more revolutionary. They would go on to create the first true personal computer, upend the computer industry, and change the world in the process.
Cut-price innovation
Those people were Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak, the founders of Apple. By mid-1975, they’d been working for some months on their own personal computer, what would go on to become the Apple I.
At the time, Wozniak was employed at HP, and he spent his post-work evenings at his desk figuring out the design of the Apple I’s circuit board. After a few months, he had a functioning prototype that was ready to be tested.
I typed a few keys on the keyboard and I was shocked! The letters were displayed on the screen.
Steve Wozniak
That was the big moment. “I typed a few keys on the keyboard and I was shocked! The letters were displayed on the screen,” Wozniak explained. “It was the first time in history anyone had typed a character on a keyboard and seen it show up on their own computer’s screen right in front of them.”
For context, many computers at the time required a terminal in order to display characters. You would type your characters into the terminal, which would feed them to the computer and then display the result on its screen. The thing you were typing on was doing none of the processing itself, which is where Wozniak’s creation differed.
Instead, Wozniak’s design comprised the whole package: a computer that could be interacted with directly. And not only that, but he’d also managed to do it for an incredibly affordable price compared to the alternatives.
For instance, while a computer might only cost you a few hundred dollars in 1975, a terminal could set you back $1,000, or roughly $6,000 today. Wozniak, on the other hand, managed to create a computer with budget parts. The processor he chose cost him just $20, for example, which was a steal compared to the chip in the Altair 8800 that Wozniak said cost “almost more than my monthly rent.”
Not only had Jobs and Wozniak managed to craft a desktop-sized computer, but they’d done so at a low cost that could be passed on to anyone who wanted to buy their own model. That combination of portability and price was the key ingredient in kicking off the personal computer revolution.
Changing the world
Wozniak felt strongly that he and Jobs should give their computer away for free. They were members of the Homebrew Computer Club based in Menlo Park, whose guiding principle was “give help to others.” Jobs, however, saw things differently, and eventually convinced Wozniak that they should sell the device and form a business around it.
In contrast to the computer world at the time, their goal was to make a computer that was obtainable by everyday people. After all, a computer is hardly “personal” if no ordinary person can afford it. Both Jobs and Wozniak were convinced that as many people as possible should own a computer.
To that end, they priced the Apple I at $666.66, chosen because Wozniak liked repeating numbers (rather than for any satanic purpose). The computer would go on to become one of the first approachable computers designed for personal use.
The groundbreaking Apple I is on display at the Computer History Museum.
Foundry
Nowadays, it might not look like much. It lacked a keyboard, mouse, and display, and it didn’t even come with a case. But compared to its rivals, it was groundbreaking. It was small enough to fit on your desk, could be hooked up to a TV and peripherals you already had, and didn’t require some esoteric operating procedure, paper cards, interpretation of flashing lights, or any of the other confusing hangups that plagued its forebears.
And perhaps most exciting of all, there was that innate ability to combine typing input and processing power. The upshot was that without needing a bulky, expensive terminal, the Apple I could be a more acceptable living room presence than any computer that came before. It forever changed the way computers looked and the way they worked.
Without Wozniak’s engineering brilliance, the Apple I would never have been born. Without Jobs’s conviction that it was something that should be sold to the masses, Apple itself might never have succeeded. And none of that would have happened were it not for those fateful few keystrokes that June day in 1975. Learn more about the history of Apple.
