The Apple II personal computer
The 11 April 2007 is the thirtieth anniversary of the patent application for the first personal computer with graphics, the Apple II.
The Altair 8800 had been launched in 1975 and was primitive in comparison. It had no display and no true storage. It received commands via a series of switches, with a single program requiring thousands of toggles without an error, and its output was in the form of flashing lights. The Altair was appreciated by hobbyists, for whom the need to assemble it was an attractive feature, but it was hardly suitable for anyone else.
The (unpatented) Apple I was the first computer which used a keyboard and a screen and which could take preloaded software input other than with paper tape. It could run simple games, but could also run applications for small businesses.
The Apple I had a $20 microprocessor on a single-circuit board with ROM. Adding some RAM, a keyboard and a monitor would make a fully functioning microcomputer. In July 1976 it went on sale for $666.66, which must have inspired talk of satanic inspiration. The price was allegedly arrived at because Wozniak liked repeating digits, and because they originally sold it to a local shop for $500 and added a one-third markup. The Apple I was to some extent fully built: it had a fully assembled circuit board containing about 30 chips. Users still had to add a case, power supply, keyboard, and display. An optional board providing a cassette interface for storage was later released at a cost of $75. It only sold 200 units.
There were, however, no graphics. This was corrected by the Apple II, the “Microcomputer for use with video display” which was bought ready assembled, and was patented as American patent 4136359, my patent of the month. It was launched in April 1977 at a computer fair.
Much of the invention is about the problem of displaying the digital output from the computer correctly on the screen, especially if that output consisted of information about colours. In technical talk, a horizontal synchronisation counter was synchronised at an odd-submultiple of the colour subcarrier reference frequency. A "delayed" count in the horizontal synchronisation counter compensated for colour subcarrier phase reversals between lines for the non-interlaced fields. This permitted vertically aligned colour graphics without altering the standard horizontal synchronisation frequency. Video colour signals were generated directly from digital signals by employing a recirculating shift register. All that was involved to enable this was adding two more chips. The computer also has a sound capability. There was a massive (for the time) 48 KB of memory. Wozniak also wrote most of the software to run these early models, which ran on variants of BASIC.
The drawing shows the computer in its “presently preferred embodiment”. Software input was via cassettes, hence their mention on the drawing.
As is well known Apple had been founded by the two Steves, Jobs with the famous garage, and Wozniak who (aged 26 at the time) was cited as the inventor on this patent. The business was initially run from Jobs’ bedroom, and there was a lot of hanging out at a nearby computer club, as it gave access to working computers.
Wozniak, who is usually described as introverted, and has at least three nicknames (“The Woz", the "Wizard of Woz", and "iWoz") had previously worked for Hewlett Packard. He was afraid that there might be claims from them that he was using their intellectual property, so he got the company's legal team to show the Apple I plans to every department. They all turned it down, and the company thought it wasn’t polished enough to be an HP computer. Wozniak thought that if HP had wanted it, the product would have been a commercial failure and might have set the personal computer business back significantly.
For designing the Apple II they were able to move into offices. "When you're in a building with nothing but telephones and Steve Wozniak," an early employee reminisced, "you know you're going to have some fun". Conditions were so primitive that the carpeting was a constant source of static electricity. Whenever someone walked over the carpet and then touched an open Apple II case, "you fried the keyboard chip".
The Apple II sold to schools as well as to businesses and individuals, and a small number are thought still to be in use. Boxy by modern standards, it looked like an appliance, and the lid popped off to allow access to its workings. Over 5 million were sold in a series of improved models, with production ending in 1993. The Mackintosh® replaced it.
Not everybody knows the origin of the famous logo of an apple with a bite taken out of it. It was created in homage to Britain’s Alan Turing, who in the 1930s laid down principles for how a computer could “think”. Turing loved Disney’s Snow White and the Seven Dwarves, which has a scene where the witch offers Snow White a poisoned apple. Hounded by authorities for his homosexuality, Turing committed suicide in 1954 by biting into an apple laced with cyanide.
As for Wozniak, he eventually severed most of his connections with Apple Computers, and spends much of his time as a philanthropist.
