Apple II(1977)

Background

The first Apple II computers went on sale on June 10, 1977 with a MOS Technology 6502 microprocessor running at 1 MHz, 4 KB of RAM, an audio cassette interface for loading programs and storing data, and the Integer BASIC programming language built into the ROMs. The video controller displayed 40 columns by 24 lines of monochrome, upper-case-only (the original character set matches ASCII characters 0x20 to 0x5F) text on the screen, with NTSC composite video output suitable for display on a TV monitor, or on a regular TV set by way of a separate RF modulator. The original retail price of the computer was $1298 U.S. (with 4 kB of RAM) and $2638 U.S. (with the maximum 48 kB of RAM). To reflect the computer's character cell color graphics capability, the Apple logo on the casing was represented using rainbow stripes, which remained a part of Apple's corporate logo until early 1998. Wozniak's open design and the Apple II's multiple expansion slots permitted a wide variety of third-party devices, including Apple II peripheral cards such as serial controllers, display controllers, memory boards, hard disks, networking components, and realtime clocks. Eventually, Apple II accelerator cards were created to double or quadruple the computer's speed. An estimated 40,000 machines were sold during its production run.