An original Apple computer, that company’s founders Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak built from scratch 45 years ago, is up for auction in the United States on Tuesday. The auction of the functioning Apple-1, that may be considered a great-great-grandfather of today’s sleek MacBooks, is expected to fetch up to $600,000 (roughly Rs 4.44 crore) and will take place in California.
The computer, also known as “Chaffey College” Apple-1 is one of only 200 computers made by Jobs and Wozniak together in the beginning of the company’s journey which began as a garage start-up to worth $2 trillion today. The computer is encased in ‘koa’ wood—a richly patinated wood native to Hawaii. Only a handful of the 200 were apparently made this way.
Apple-1 was mostly sold as component parts by Jobs and Wozniak. The rare wood encasing is said to have been added by a computer shop that originally took a delivery of some 50 units.
Auction house John Moran Auctioneers said that the device, which comes with a 1986 Panasonic video monitor, has had only two owners to date.
The device was originally purchased by an electronics professor at Chaffey College in Rancho Cucamonga, California. It was then sold to his student in 1977, a listing on the auction house’ website read.
According to a Los Angeles Times report, the student, whose name has been kept anonymous, paid $650 (roughly Rs 48,100) for it at the time. That student now stands to make a pretty penny off the auction. A working Apple-1 was sold by Bonhams for more than $900,000 in 2014.
It was only in the late 1970s and early 1980s when Apple rose to success. Things foundered after the departure of Jobs and Wozniak. Things eventually got better in the late 1990s after Jobs was brought back as the chief executive. The charismatic Jobs oversaw the iPod launch and later iPhone, before he died in 2011.
