The following actually happened, kind of.
They say an average man has heros while a lucky man becomes the hero of his own life. As I waited for Steve Jobs to visit my houseboat, I wondered what I was a hero of. It didn’t take long to find out.
Steve came to see the weather station I built with my Apple 1 single board computer. I met Jobs, and Wozniak at the Homebrew Computer Club, where a group of nerds were sharing the knowledge of the personal computers they had built. The two Steve's demoed a computer they had created on a single board the size of piece of legal paper. That was a phenomenal achievement.
The Apple 1 to me was magical. I dug up $666 to buy one, and instantly became energized by all things it could do. Jobs liked the weather station and the book I was writing about it but said "the Apple 1 is a piece of junk, come down to Cupertino and you can swap it for our incredible Apple 2." He added he was starting a new company called Apple Computer. I visited the new Apple office on Bandley Drive, picked up a new Apple II, but forgot to bring my Apple 1 with me. There is a cool story about Steve offering me a job at Apple, but I will save that for another time.
About the Apple 1
Steve felt the Apple 1 was a bad mark for the future of the new Apple Computer company he started. So he generously offered to replace any Apple 1 turned in with a newly designed Apple 2. I kept mine. Forty-six years later, just 99 Apple 1s are known to exist. You can learn all about each of these Apple 1 computers at this neat website: https://www.apple1registry.com
Want to Buy It?
My Apple 1 is at the auction house RR Auction https://www.rrauction.com. If you are interested in being notified when the auction will be, please enter your email address below. The auction house will only use this to send you the date of the auction.
