“Paul Terrell opened the Byte Shop in Mountain View, California in December of 1975. It was one of the first computer stores in the world, and did a lot to help popularize a business which just barely existed at the time,” Harry McCracken reports for TIME Magazine. “And it earned an even more legendary spot in tech history in 1976, when a couple of local proto-computer geeks tried to convince Terrell to sell the rudimentary PC they’d cobbled together.”
“Those geeks were Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak,” McCracken reports. “They called their machine the Apple-1, and it was a do-it-yourself kit; any buyers would have to solder the necessary chips onto the circuit board themselves, then supply accoutrements such as a power supply, keyboard and display.””
McCracken reports, “Terrell was intrigued, but told Jobs that what he really needed were fully-assembled computers. In fact, if Jobs could come back with an assembled version of the Apple-1, the Byte Shop would buy fifty of them. Jobs did, and the Byte Shop became the first Apple dealer…”
Read more, and see the photos, in the full article here.
Old news (literally).
I remember the Byte shop well. I bought my Apple 2 there, and my first Mac in Palo Alto at Mac Attic. Joined the MUG in Sunnyvale that Wozniak atarted and lead. Great times.
“atarted” LOL, at first I thought you typed some other word. MDN really needs an edit button.
This article is wrong:
“buyers would have to solder the necessary chips onto the circuit board themselves”
Apple I had chips already soldered, and power supply included. Jobs’ was always integrator, so he insisted that they would do and sell as assembled device as they could at the time.
The next step would be manufacturing complete PC, which was Apple II.
My boss had an Apple I which we built into a glass coffee table. I have some photographs around here somewhere…
I worked for the Terrell brothers at the Byte Shop NorthWest in Seattle, WA from 1980 to 1985. Great times were had by all.
I used to hang around their store in 77 lusting after the Apples that they had on display. I couldn’t afford one being newly married but I could settle for a Rat Shack Model 1 in 1977 for my “Christmas” present.
I applied for a sales job with them advertised in January of 1980 but never heard back from them. In July they called and remembered me and offered me a job. The rest is history.
I bought parts from them and wire-wrapped my own 8080 CPM box. S100 bus, Northstar hard-sector disk controller, California Computer Systems CPU board, 64k of ram. Three 76k hard-sector floppies. Yea, those were the days.