Happy 45th Birthday Apple! (Apple was founded on April Fools Day, April 1, 1976.)
Steve Jobs and Steve (Woz) Wozniak and Ronald Wayne founded what would become one of the most successful companies in history. The company was originally founded to sell the Apple I personal computer kit to the Homebrew Computer Club.
Wayne sold his 10% share of the company back to Jobs and Wozniak for $800 just 12 days later. (That investment would be worth more than $200 billion today.) Jobs and Wozniak hung in there, releasing the Apple I, which revolutionized the then-fledgling home computer industry.
The company’s first logo incorporated Sir Isaac Newton, due to the “Apple” connection. It was hand-drawn by Ronald Wayne and contains a quotation from William Wordsworth “Newton…A Mind Forever Voyaging Through Strange Seas of Thought…Alone.”
For an inside look at the founding of Apple, be sure to read Woz’s article Homebrew and How the Apple Came to Be.