WATCH THE FULL STORY HERE: https://youtu.be/NiOu3DL7t94 It started with a magazine. A five-page feature on the Apple-1 in the February 1977 issue of Kilobaud was enough to convince its eventual owner: less expensive than the alternatives on the market, and a real way into computing. He bought this one new at the Byte Shop's Berkeley location — serial number 01-0033 — and spent a couple of years deep in it, learning to program. Then it went into storage. It stayed there for 45 years, unearthed only around 2021, and wouldn't power on. It took the help of two current Apple engineers, working in their own spare time, to bring it back — finally running again on August 4th, 2024. The Apple-1 was the first pre-assembled personal computer to reach the market, and the product that launched Apple Computer. Designed by Steve Wozniak, it was among the first to build video display circuitry directly into the board, at a time when most computers communicated through blinking lights and switches rather than a screen and keyboard. This example comes from the very first batch Apple ever produced, assembled in Jobs' parents' garage in Los Altos — boards later distinguished from the larger second run by the absence of a printer's diamond monogram beneath the Apple logo. Still haven't subscribed to Sotheby's on YouTube? ►► https://www.youtube.com/sothebys/ Want more information about the sale? ►► https://www.sothebys.com/en/buy/auction/2026/history-of-science-technology-2
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Don't use AI visuals, please.
Steve Wozniak probably soldered that motherboard by hand, that's crazy to think about.
He's kept that thing in incredible shape.
Throwing down essentially $4000 in today's money on a hobbyist device in a market that was barely starting in 1976 is quite the gamble. This guy must have been already pretty well off.
One of the few bits of hardware that you could definitively say the Woz actually worked on it/built it still in existence. Would be very cool to see a video of this computer and Steve Wozniak together.
Sotheby’s should have a proper budget to use actual artists instead of AI slop. What a shame.
Let me get this straight. You bought a device that was $666 and that device also had an image of a bitten apple on it?!
Of course he sold them for $666.....
1973, as a college student, I was writing BASIC programs on a teleprinter to save on ticker tape. Then we went online via a 300 bauds modem (30 chars a second) to a mainframe computer which ran my program and sent the desired response back to (,my) teleprinter, which printed-out both my program and the response, and gave the time the mainframe spent running my program (about a second). Going online like that to a remote computer was expensive both in telephone and much more in mainframe time.
In 84 I had a pretty extensive Christmas list for my parents. And not a thing on it said "computer". They got me a computer. I had no idea why, I had space battles to fight with He-Man and Scooby-Doo. I didn't have time for computers! But I took to it like a fish to water. And that sparked a career that is almost mythical when I look back and think about all I've accomplished and how successful I've become. On a teacher's salary my dad spent the equivalent of many thousands of dollars on a very big gamble. But it worked out very well.
Sotheby using AI is embarrassing, ironic, and expected. I’d say “for shame” but a company that makes multi millions on the back of stolen art and artifacts hasn’t felt shame in decades 😂
That's a piece of history right there, but also a 2.5 million USD machine, in that condition maybe even more
Please dont use AI visuals
I visited an engineer in his lab and he showed me his portable terminal. Then he put the telephone handset into his modem and dialed to the external computer and showed me SHF stripline calculation for pcbs. about 1976/77
In 1981 I pressured my mum to by me a sinclair zx81. I learned basic programming and assembler language. At some point when i was at university, it stopped working and I sold it to someone who fixed it up and used it.
I remember being there when Steve Wozniak showed off the first Apple 1 in the lobby outside the meeting room at the homebrew computer club meeting at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center (SLAC) auditorium
My high school still had a teletype terminal running connected to the local college in 1984. Really noisy.
High school physics class: we had a teletype connected to a regional timeshare computer via 110 baud acoustic coupler. We learned to program BASIC on it. Good times.
who doesn’t love a bit of ai slop to ruin an otherwise decent video
This is the kind of story that's just beautiful all around.