Okay, so like I said, where's my other mic? Ronald Wayne is in the house. He's going to come in a few minutes. I think the main event here today is... Well, okay, so the main event... Okay. You tell the story. Paul Terrell gave Apple its first purchase order in 1976. And I'll just say another couple words. So, Paul lives in Portland and he's in his 90s now, but doing pretty well.
And 83 years old.
I was going to round for another 10. Ronald Wayne is in his 90s. Anyway, and Paul had the 50th birthday party for the Byte Shop in December, which... look at Ronald Wayne's here. So, anyway, we're... Ronald Wayne.
So, that's what 90 looks like.
You know, I would like to say something to you know, the reason you know this this event is actually happening over there on the stage is in April 1st, you know, after they came 50, they did the partnership agreement April 1st 50 years ago sort of thing. The bike shop was 50 in December. And so forth and I called Woz up on the phone or I emailed him. Woz is very hard to get on the phone by the way. But but he will definitely respond to my emails and I said, 'Woz, I've got this great idea about history repeating itself.' Okay? And I said, 'I want to have an event where we can we can reinvent what happened 50 years ago and I want to do 50 Apple 1 replica computers and in the spirit of Steve Wozniak. You know, Woz was always about things should be smaller and smaller and smaller. And and the Apple 1 replica, if you look at that board, there's about 70 components on there. The bike shop Apple 1 replica's got about seven on them. So, I said, 'Woz, we're we're taking your concepts forward here and so forth.' And even today now that they've got the AI and CBT and all of that. So, so we think we created a product which which going forward, you know, and how is computer science going to be taught in the future? But with that product, it actually does machine like language computer programming with the Woz monitor and and we have the Apple basic, the integer basic that he did on on that board and and there's your basic and then with a Wi-Fi attachment, you've got AI. So, so everything that's going on with computers can be be there. And and I said, 'I've got to bring it out.' It was this famous $666.66. So, so we have 50 of them here to show. If you want to buy one for $666, I said, 'Bobby Eaton and Arner Auction would be happy to auction those off in a year at $10,000.' So, it'd make a nice little investment for you. At any rate, that's the pitch on on the the computer product. But, uh once again, part of the history was that I always thought I got the first 50 Apple Ones. As it turns out, I found out that Woz got the first Apple uh computer off the run. And he decided that he wanted to give Lisa a Lou a computer for for their school. And so, he went to Steve and said, 'Steve, I need one of those computers to give to Lisa.' And Steve Jobs, in in his way, said, 'No, I'm not going to give you one. You're going to have to buy one for $300.' And so, Woz bought one for $300. Lisa got uh serial number one delivered to her by Woz. And Paul Terrell's bike shops got number two through 51. So, so and then uh who only only knows where the 175 of them ended up. But, at any rate, what we wanted to do is is uh replicate that history repeating itself here today on stage. Uh Woz has uh generously con- uh contributed his time to come here. Lisa just got to meet Lisa for the first time. For 50 years we've known of each other, but we've never met. It's been wonderful. She's got some great stories to tell and so forth. We actually all do. And at the end of the presentation here, we're going to have a Q&A. So, any questions you might have or whatever, we'd be happy to to answer them. Uh so, at that point...
I'd would like to expand on my Liza story. Well, and I had had a home brew computer club with this name, people. I think Liza came, as I recall, Liza came and spoke to us. And she was you taking computers, rolling them in, telling them stories, teaching kids on it. Uh, maybe and found out she was up in Cotati, California. So, I seek jobs to drive up to Cotati, California and she had like an old rented PDP computer and she would take it to the kids, but she worried about what their concept of what a computer was, not how to use it. How to use it is part of it. Sit down and play this game, but it's set up with a lot of instructions people wrote to act a certain way. It's not like intelligence of its own. Concepts, concepts that get into the brain of what a computer really is. I admired that so much and for the 2-hour drive back home, 2 or 3 hour, I I told Steve, 'We should give Liza the first Apple I. We should What is let's do it.' But he wouldn't go for that. So, he said I could buy it for $300. And a discount. I got a discount.
Never enough. I... No, I'm very happy. No, it's just you know how we are. You do the right things. You don't really worry about the total money cost and all.
I think that that time we had one of the first Mits Altairs in our office. We started out in a second floor business office. We started the Sonoma County Computer Club at the end of 19... Let's see, what are we doing? 1975 1974. I think the Sonoma County Computer Club predated the Homebrew Computer Club.
Um, did it predate the Altair?
Yes. Um, we had a teletype hooked over telnet. Um, with acoustic couplers at 300 baud. Um, from Call Computer in Mountain View. We had a hookup to the I think it was a Decision 2000 HP system at Lawrence Hall of Science. Um, so, I didn't know anything about computers. I'm an educator and a philosopher and a social theorist. Um, but I came from a family that was particularly interested in science and the future. My father was part of the SETI project early on. So, I'm just doing what I was trained to do. Um, to be an educator and to to be looking into the future. Um, I could tell lots of stories, but I really want to ask Steve a question.
Okay. That's that's that's the sort of thing that the first computer should go to. First Apple one.
Well, the first Apple one is still the property of my nonprofit corporation group center and learning options center. It's just a part of my last name. It has its own name.
Um, yeah. So, when Steve gave it to me, I was just amazed. Um, on the other hand, I had no idea what to do with it. Because it was just a naked motherboard and I said, you know, well, thank you very much. This is delightful. What do I do with it? And then he said, oh, well, you get somebody to build a case and you go down to Zaks and you buy a cherry pro keyboard and you get somebody else to build a power supply for it. Uh, and by the way, we didn't know you had to have a switching power supply because so they built the...
Well, it ran sort of. Anyway, I took it around the first school the first place I took it to was a math class in the Winston Churchill High School. By the way, I didn't have my own school. If I had a class of students, I would have them hanging off the rafters. It's good that it's good that I'm not a classroom teacher. But I'm really interested in the future of learning writ large and education and schools as one of the tools that we use for learning. But what I want to know from you is what would you like to see happen with the Apple I in the future? I'm actually a kid compared to these two guys. I'm only 81. And I'm not going to be around to protect this machine anymore. So, what are some good ideas?
Well, I don't know. There are people that obviously saw Apple I for an infinite now, but there it's a lot of people just want to go back and learn where technology came from step by step. You can learn what lessons you can actually learn from those early stages. Just all any of the computers that it's all there the early processors, how they work the and you know, how do you set up something you can program and run programs on. So, education wise still early computers are have some retro value now.
Well, but we have to actually take care of this physical object. And that's my concern. It's what do we do with that? I know what I like to see do with it, but I but since you're the originator, I want to know what you think its future should be of the physical object of the Apple I number one.
Well, the the best thing of all is if it gets to a museum where people will be able to see it and learn about it and understand it forever.
Do you have any museums in mind?
There's quite a few scientists from museums nowadays that would love it.
I did I did ask the Smithsonian if they wanted it about 25 years ago. They said, 'Oh, yeah, if you donate it to us, we'll take it.' But no, we won't take You can't keep ownership of it, and we won't promise that we'll do anything specific with it. So, I I am holding out to make sure that the future of this physical item is that it go on tour around the world, and everybody gets a chance to see it and experience visually this artifact. And that...
And that all these wonderful replicas that are being made, everybody should have a chance to do what you're saying, learn to program it, and experience what it was like when we didn't have all these user-friendly apps. Um, and sometimes...
like I always like being the first to do things in my life, cuz I was too excited to be the same as others. So, you've got a number one. So, that's the first.
Yeah. And and we need we all need to curate the number one. And as long as I'm holding this microphone, don't stop me, because... But let me say one more thing, which is that I have a collection of all kinds of other stuff as well. And it is sitting in a high fire danger building in Sonoma County right now. I need help. I can't lift a box anymore. I need physical help um, preserving this collection. So, any of you who don't have enough to do, come and see me in Sonoma.
Hey, uh, Liza Liza, your computer, when it goes around the world on this tour, I think I saw a guy over there by the door by the name of Mark and I think he was volunteering to make that computer have a home here at the computer museum. So, uh...
Okay, but we have to guarantee to share it because it's not mine or yours anymore or the Computer History Museum's. It belongs to the world.
They got better things to do than target some poor soldier in the desert with these things.
Well, the topic of education it really motivates me. Um, and um, I don't know. I'm thinking about the word ontology. Um, but the good thing about language models is that um, you can teach it whatever you want. And it doesn't act Yeah, it doesn't know things. Ontology An ontology of knowledge would be knowing things. Anyway.
I think that the most important things ever are the ones you feel. That you have emotions about. And you know, and it might be that their pet that's injured and you're so worried about it and you could cry. And sometimes they go, 'Well, men don't cry.' Exactly.
They pretend to cry. They simulate human emotions, but they don't have them.
In the end, it might just prove that human brains really aren't that much anyway. They're just a set of logic gates.
Well, it's been uh I I gave the the demo of the Apple I as a terminal into GPT. I did that a year ago. I've been doing that demo for the past year. And it's really been helpful to see how limiting GPT is. It's astounding. You can You can ask the same question 10 times and you won't get the same answer. Which means how can I don't understand how people can do biology.
You can't have one answer because you're not one type of person. But I think we Let's think this. Let's go back to where the Apple I came from. Okay, I've been doing incredible projects and computer projects all my life, designing the hottest products of the day at Hewlett-Packard. And this club started. And oh my gosh, I had built a little machine that I could type on a keyboard, so expensive. My TV could display and I could talk to computers on the ARPANET. The ARPANET, today's internet. It was then it was six university computers. MIT, UCLA, UC Santa Barbara, Stanford, and um I could talk to them with this little machine. So I thought, 'Oh, I'm going to go to this new club and I'll really be a hero showing it off.' And I went there and everybody was immersed in these little things called computers, which is another name for processor, elaborate processors. I said, 'Oh my god, those are like the ones I used to design all through high school.' The number four department built one. And I went when I went down to the club and the first night I said, 'Instead of talking over the phone line to a faraway computer like Licklider did, why don't I just put the computer here? Microprocessors are the brains.' Looked at the day that the micro Early microprocessors weren't good enough to build a real computer. I told my dad, 'I'm going to have a 4K computer someday that can run programs.' And he said, 'It costs as much as a house.' I sat there for a 2 seconds. I said, 'I'll live in an apartment.' That was an internal goal, and I was too shy to ever talk to anybody about that, but I just keep forming these internal goals when you're very, very shy. And um so then I saw first time the computer but the whole formula to a personal computer that wasn't just a processor with some switches for ones and zeros and lights for ones and zeros. I built that machine 5 years before. It was called the HP Soda Computer. I got all the parts given to me. And and I was a little more into humanistic products like the Hewlett Packard scientific calculators. Press five, and a five appears. Human. So, the that whole I was also a really good typist. So, the idea of having a keyboard and a video display, that was I take it down to the Homebrew Computer Club, show it off. And then I I said, 'Oh my gosh, build HP Soda Basic. I'm going to write a Basic for a microprocessor.' And I'd show off bits of the the Basic week after week after week. I'd pass out all my designs for free. I didn't do it for money. I didn't do it for a company. I didn't do it to start an industry. No, I wanted other engineers, even shy engineers, to look at my designs and say, 'Wow, look what he did. How impressive.' I wanted to impress engineers. I've gotten that recognition now. And um and I give my designs to other people, and they build their own version of it. And then um and then um some people I I helped build their own. And then Steve Jobs came into town. He'd come into town about once a year, and he had ceremony. So, he's always looking for a way to make money, and he said, 'We should start a company.' But somehow you need a formalization, a company that grows big, that has lots of money coming in, and that's how you can be somebody important in the world. But I would never leave Hewlett-Packard. I'm going to be an engineer for life at Hewlett-Packard. I would never go up to Oregon Yard because I didn't want to be political. I had ruled politics out of my life. I would never vote. And so I got I had I had it okay at Hewlett-Packard. I can still keep my job at Hewlett-Packard and do Apple on the side. So this was the the Apple I computer was a very humble start and I made my my job. Thank you.
But anyway, then Steve Jobs came early on and he said we should make a PC board of it so it can be to make more than one of them at low cost. And that's what he had done with my blue box back in college. He made little PC boards. He could make more faster. And he said he said he's got this guy at Atari that is sort of an older gentleman that knows more about companies and and he could be we could set up the company the way we did it for 45% 45% and Ron Wayne had 10% over for a minute a minute second. And I thought oh good, an elderly person that we can trust and all that. And he he referred me to a lot of books and one of them was none dare call it treason. And they it was all this libertarian stuff. And so I said I said well I was so young and naive. I didn't know any of this stuff or anything towards politics or anything. So that's okay. Some of that makes sense especially today. Golden property might as well might be better than a dollar that people just change the amount of be more like Bitcoin. So Ron Wayne went to his apartment one night. I pretty much didn't know him. Steve Jobs everything went through Steve Jobs. So he got the experiences with Ron and went to his apartment and we talked about this computer and how we would set up our partnership and I'll let him talk for now on. I got You know You what? Well, you could talk a little bit more about what you remember going on. Okay, Mike then. Okay, Mike then.
Steve Jobs came to me and said he had he and you were going to form a company and that he was having a little difficulty with you. You were very careful about your circuits.
And not exactly the circuit. What I was thinking was, okay, you wanted to count you wanted to divide down to get down divide a crystal down to get the right speed to for horizontal on a television. And a vertical's on a television. And maybe you want to count 200 numbers. So, you'll start out with one, you'll count it to 200, and then equate it with logic things. Did I reach 200? And when you reach 200, start the counter over. No, no. I would do things like start it at start the counter at 200 and count down. And when you get to zero, the processor put out a little signal that said reload whatever's on its inputs to 200. And little tricks like that you come up with and you can't be restricted from using those. You know, future on, but uh we came to some agreement.
But once uh we had a conversation and I believe I had persuaded you of the importance of your designs being for the proprietor the property of of the new company. And once that happened, I remember distinctly, Jobs jumped up and just instantly and said, 'That's it. We're going to form a company.' I knew you would have 45%, I would have Jobs would have 45%, and uh uh and locked in by pins and he says and Mr. Wayne will have 10% that is tiebreaker in case you two uh have any disputes. So okay, that's the way it is. That's the way it is. I was quite honored and astonished at the same time. At any rate, I if you recall marched out of my office, sat down and typed up the three-page uh uh funding contract the uh Apple Empire.
It was impressive sitting on your apartment just to type out a legal document. Um, I was just so amazed how some people can.
Yes, he was. I I couldn't believe that he that he couldn't believe that someone could sit down and who wasn't an attorney and and draw up a three-page partnership agreement who uh looking at the uh covering all the points and issues and concerns and advances and so on. And uh and I had of course by that time had 20 years in the game and I had quite a bit of experience in all aspects. I was also a polymath. I was a designer, draftsman, illustrator, machinist, book uh uh you name it. I I got that through job shopping at different enterprises doing all sorts of different things. And in the various times along the way, it came to me to write up contracts and I copied off my first one and learned enough to be able to draw up the second one and so on down the line until we got to the Apple situation and I was able to astonish Mr. Wozniak and uh and type up the Apple following Apple.
Mike Markkula that that didn't get rid of as much as Steve and I for really creating this whole industry. He came in, told us how to start a company, he was willing to invest the money and build 1,000 computers, told us how to professionally he had to look, and things we had to do, what sort of people we had to hire, for what roles, and what their responsibilities were. Steve and I would sit down and interview a little bit. And um Mike really established Apple for the first years. And uh he knew he knew what to do business. He didn't necessarily tell him and about our own stock option, he made a million and a half dollars back when it was a huge amount of money worth. And uh and so he he was just looking around for somebody to build electronics. So, Mike Markkula, yeah, not to be forgotten.
You know, it was Don Valentine that I was sent my my partner.
I had it Don Valentine here and uh this kid in the garage. I never knew.
Don Valentine? I don't know. But Steve was he was he at the Steve Jobs uh Don Valentine somewhere, probably he probably he had relationships with Atari.
