EARLY HISTORY
Stephen G. Wozniak and Steven P. Jobs founded Apple Computer Co. in April of 1976. The partners launched operations by making and selling a computer circuit board, dubbed the Apple I. The machine had no keyboard, case, sound, or graphics. Computer retailing chain Byte Shop ordered 50 Apple I units a month later, and Jobs used his parents' garage as a temporary manufacturing site. Mike Markkula, a former marketing executive for both Intel Corp. and Fairchild Semiconductor, paid $250,000 for a 33-percent stake in Apple and helped Jobs to create a long-term business plan. In 1977, the firm unveiled the Apple II—the first PC to offer color graphics capacity. The new machine also included a keyboard, power supply, case, and 4KB of standard memory. That year, the company's sales reached $1 million.
Apple's earliest venture into online technology came in 1978 when it began offering Apple II users a telephone-based connection service to Dow Jones. Just two years after its inception, the company became one of the fastest growing companies in the United States. Sales grew tenfold and the firm's dealer network grew to include roughly 300 distributors. Employees were required to give up their typewriters in favor of PCs in 1979. The firm also released the Apple II Plus, which offered 48KB of memory, and the first Apple printer, known as the Silentype. In an effort to tap into the school market, Apple established the Apple Education Foundation. Sales of the Apple II jumped 40 percent, reaching 35,000 units, and thecompany's employees totaled 250.
In 1980, Apple released the Apple III, its most advanced machine to date. Boasting a new operating system, a built-in disk controller, and four peripheral slots, the Apple III was priced at $3,495—nearly double the price of its predecessors. To bolster international sales, Apple constructed a manufacturing plant in Ireland and a European support center in the Netherlands. EDUNET, an online network serving professionals in higher education and research fields, adopted the Apple II as its network access PC. Apple also established Apple Seed, a computer program designed to promote computer literacy among elementary and high school students. That year, the firm conducted its initial public offering (IPO), selling 4.6 million shares at $22 apiece. The IPO was the largest in U.S. corporate history since Ford Motor Co. first listed its shares in 1956. At that time, employees exceeded 1,000. With a dealer network of 800 distributors in the United States and Canada, and an another 1,000 distributors overseas, Apple had the farthest reach of any major player in the computer industry.
In 1981, Apple established offices in both France and England. Of the firm's 40 new product releases that year, the most notable were the Apple Language Card, which increased the compatibility of Apple II machines with programs written in languages such as Pascal and Fortran; the IEEE-488 interface card, which allowed Apple II units to work with more than 1,400 scientific and technical instruments; and Profile, a 5MB hard disk. In 1982, Apple became the first PC company to attain sales of $1 billion. Competition intensified as more than 100 companies started manufacturing PCs. Apple unveiled its dot matrix printer that year. In 1983, Apple introduced the Apple IIe and Apple III Plus PCs; the ImageWriter printer and other peripheral devices; and AppleWorks, a suite of products including word processing, spreadsheet, and database software. The firm was ranked 411 on the Fortune 500 list. To further entrench itself in schools, Apple launched the "Kids Can't Wait" program, through which it gave 10,000 computers to schools in California.
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