Apple I Computer May Fetch Over $150K

Apple’s reputation for making overpriced computers won’t be helped this month when a machine from its original line goes on the block in London. An Apple I, one of around 200 machines hand-built by Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak, is expected to fetch in excess of $150,000 at auction. When it was first bought, it cost $666.66 and was shipped from Steve Jobs’ family garage. It has a whole eight kilobytes of memory and an eight-bit processor. “Introduced in July 1976, the Apple I was sold without a casing, power supply, keyboard or monitor,” reads the lot description by Christie's. “However, because the motherboard was completely pre-assembled, it represented a major step forward in comparison with the competing self-assembly kits of the day.” The Apple I is being offered alongside other bits of computing history, including papers written by Charles Babbage and Alan Turing and parts of a German Enigma machine.