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An original Apple-1 computer made by Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak in the early stages of the company has sold for $400,000 at auction. The computer, which was one of just 200 made and sold as a kit, has only had two owners prior to the auction, a college professor and his student, whom he sold the computer to for a measly $650.
The rest of this article is behind a paywall. Please sign in or subscribe to access the full content.Now complete as a functioning computer, the Apple-1 was sold with the original user manuals and software installed on cassettes, and was brought to auction by John Moran Auctioneers in California.
The piece is made out of Hawaiin Koa wood and follows only a handful of original Apple-1 computers to have ever been sold at auction, with the previous fetching an even greater sum of $904,000 (£669,000) back in 2014.
The Apple-1 was originally designed by Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak, and was later convinced to sell it by Steve Jobs. It was Apple’s first product for sale, and Jobs allegedly sold his own car for a few hundred dollars to finance the production. Sold for the somewhat-ominous price of $666.66 (around $3,000 now accounting for inflation), it featured a personal kit that could then be either used as is or in a custom wooden case, much like that featured in the sold Apple-1 above. The Apple-1 was ground-breaking for its time, featuring storage of 456 kilobytes (around 300,000 times less than the average iPhone now).
They are now collectors' items and rarely come up for sale, so it is no surprise a computer enthusiast wished to grab this piece of tech history when they could.
