Apple Display -- under Development
Cabinet [Donations by Jeff Ullman [JU] and others]
with Evan Wiederhold
- Apple 2 [JU]
- Apple Macintosh [JU] with keyboard [Gio].
Stanford Library MAC history Project.
- Apple X
- Newton PDA [SUMEX]
- Newton Poster [Bob Lantz]
- NexT Cube [SUMEX, not yet on display]
- Wooden Apple -- looking for one
A history of Apple and related events
Based on Walter Peterson's
Van Burnham: Video Game Timeline [Wired, May 2001], with many additions from a
variety of (mainly on-line) published sources.
Information on Apples also from James Willing
Also see Alex Pang, Ph.D.:
Making the Macintosh.
and corrections by Dr. O.M. Betz, received April 2006.
Dates introduced should be verified. Dates pertaining specifically to Apple
are in Bold font.
1972: Nolan Bushnell and Ted Dabney start Atari to make video-game consoles.
Their first product is a much-imitated hit: Pong.
1975: MITS introduces the Altair personal computer, named after
a Star Trek episode, A Voyage to Altair. The kit cost $397 for
a 256 byte computer. The I/O consisted of switches and lights.
It was designed by Ed Roberts and Bill Yates.
1975: Microsoft is founded after Bill Gates and Paul Allen adapt
and sell BASIC to MITS for the Altair PC.
1975: Zilog Z-80 2.5Mhz processor chip is introduced.
1976: Steve Jobs And Steve Wozniak program the hit Videogame Breakout at Atari.
1976: Nolan Bushnell sells Atari to Warners.
1976: The Apple I personal computer -- a circuit board, to be
installed in a wooden box, to be made by the purchaser, is built by Steve
Jobs and Steve Wozniak.
1977: Apple Computer is founded by Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak and
introduces the Apple II personal computer, color graphics. It has a 6502 CPU,
4K of RAM, a Basic compiler, and game paddles.
1977: Apple, Commodore, and Tandy begin selling personal computers.
1977, April: Apple II introduced at the 1st West Coast Computer Faire. Price at
First Availability was June 1977. Standard Memory: 4K bytes.
1978: Total computers in use in the U.S. exceed a half million units.
1978: Xerox Palo Alto Research Center (PARC) builds the Alto, the first computer to
use icons and a mouse instead of text and arrow keys for navigation.
1979, April: VisiCalc, the first electronic spreadsheet software, is
shown at the West Coast Computer Faire.
VisiCalc was developed by Dan Bricklin and Bob Frankston.
Visicalc is marketed by Personal Software corporation, a vendor of game
Dan maintains a
VisiCalc transforms the Apple
computer into a machine relevant for business users.
1979, June: Apple II+ introduced. Price at Introduction: $1,195.00
Standard Memory: 48k. One of the first computers to incorporate input
(keyboard), output (video text and color graphics), and offline
storage (cassette tape) in a single unit. Also an
optional 5 1/4 inch floppy disk drive (112kb or 140kb each depending
on firmware revision).
1979: Steve Jobs visits Xerox Parc and views their Alto Computer.
1980: Total computers in use in the U.S. exceed one million units.
1980, September: Apple III introduced. Price at Introduction:
$3,495.00 Standard Memory: 128k. The first 'corporately designed'
system from Apple, and the first major flop! The Apple III was plagued
with compatibility and reliability problems from the start. Poor
quality IC sockets, and equally poor airflow in the case caused many
problems, some of which generated some very odd solutions. Perhaps the
most famous (infamous?) was the service bulletin advising that some
intermittent problems could be corrected by lifting the front of the
unit 3-4 inches, and dropping it! Even more curious was that this
usually worked! But this exercise did little for the units reputation.
1981: Commodore brings out the VIC-20 at $300, to drive a TV display.
1982: Former Apple Exec Trip Hawkins starts a software game company:
1983: Total computers in use in the U.S. exceed ten million units.
1983, January ?. Apple IIe introduced. Price at Introduction: $1,395.00
The first model in the Apple II line with an integral option for
1983, January: Apple Lisa introduced. Price at Introduc