Yesterday, a "superb example" of one of the first personal computers — an Apple, not a PC — was auctioned off for a whopping $210,700 at Christie's auction house in London. Apple co-founders Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak first sold their "Apple-1" computers from Jobs' parents garage. The "superb" Apple-1 specimen auctioned off includes all the original packaging and instruction manuals, the original dated invoice, and a signed note from Jobs. Auctioneers hope it will fetch a price well into the six figures. Here's a look, by the numbers:
200
Total number of Apple-1s produced by Jobs and Wozniak
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50
Estimated number of surviving Apple-1s
82
The number of the Apple-1 being auctioned off later this month
$666.66
Amount the computer sold for in 1976, reflecting co-founder Steve Wozniak's preference for repeating numbers
$2560
The price equivalent today, after adjustments for inflation. ("Even 34 years ago Apple’s hardware was shockingly expensive," quips Steven Mostyn at The Tech Herald.)
$475
The amount Apple-1s sold for after a price drop in April of 1977, when the Apple II came on the market
$161,600 to $242,400
The amount that Christie's auction house expected to get for the computer
$210,700
The amount the computer actually sold for
$50,000
The highest amount an Apple-1 had previously brought in at auction, without the benefit of a signed note from Steve Jobs
$999
The starting price of the new MacBook Air laptop
8
The amount of memory, in kilobytes, the Apple-1 has. (It "could barely power a game of Pong," notes Nick Bilton in The New York Times.)
4,194,304
The amount of memory, in kilobytes, the new, top-of-the-line MacBook Air has
3,648
The average size, in kilobytes, of a single song in the form of an mp3 file
21 and 25
The ages of Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak, respectively, when they first began selling the Apple-1 in 1976
19
The age of Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg when he launched the social networking site in February of 2004
$6.1 billions
The net worth of the now 55-year-old Steve Jobs, according to Forbes
$6.9 billion
The net worth of the now 26-year-old Zuckerberg, according to Forbes
Sources: The Tech Herald, Forbes (2), The New York Times, Apple.com, NPR, Cult of Mac, Computer World, Daily Mail, Christies.com, Answers.com, CNET
This article was originally published on November 12, and updated on November 24.
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