40 Years Ago, Woz Typed One Line on a Personal Computer — and It Ended Up Changing Our World | QDaily Business History

Forty years ago today, the first rough version of the personal computer appeared — and it is not fundamentally different from the one you own now.

When we sit at our computers today and tap at the keyboard without a second thought, it is hard to imagine what was going through the mind of the man who typed the world's first line of text 40 years ago. His name was Steve Wozniak, and the time was 10 p.m. on June 29, 1975.

Yes, that Wozniak — Steve Jobs's partner and Apple's co-founder. Over the next two years Apple's first two products, the Apple I and the Apple II, were born, and something called the "personal computer" entered people's lives.

Before that, the hulking machines called "computers" had nothing to do with ordinary life. Apart from a few unusually curious minds, nobody bothered to imagine what such a thing might have to do with them.

Apple I

"The term 'personal computer' (PC) is part of everyday language now, but when it first appeared it sounded like pure fantasy — the way 'personal satellite' sounds to us today," said Paul Graham, the well-known Silicon Valley internet entrepreneur and investor, recalling the early years of the personal computer.

The remarkable part is that Wozniak did not merely invent a what-you-see-is-what-you-get typewriter. That line of text, and the Apple that followed it, made the personal computer real. Over the next 40 years the computer went from specialized equipment only governments, labs and large companies could afford to a basic fixture in every home and every office. Even today's smartphones and tablets are an extension of the same trend.

After Apple's personal computer came operating systems, software, internet services… People listened to music on them, watched videos, read, got their news, made films, livestreamed events, spoke their minds and met more people. That one line of text changed the way people live.

What Exactly Did Wozniak Do?

Between 1975 and 1977 he created two remarkable products, the Apple I and the Apple II. In those years Apple Computer was founded, and Wozniak turned his own hobby into a career — and gradually turned what had been a career for a few people into a hobby for nearly everyone. He wanted to build a toy that could type and display video.

Apple II

Before Wozniak typed that line, a few things had given him ideas: a terminal he had once designed that could type, connect to a network and send characters back to a screen; and the "Cream Soda Computer" he had put together in college, an attempt to build a machine out of relatively simple random-access memory chips instead of the magnetic-core memory computers used at the time.

Wozniak was working at Hewlett-Packard then, and he did this after hours. Out of those ideas and experiments he finally got his invention built. The Apple I looks crude today, like an unfinished typewriter, but next to other products of the time its convenience was obvious. The cheap computers that had caught on in the preceding years made buyers order the parts and solder the chips together at home; the Apple I put all 30 necessary chips onto a single circuit board. It had built-in cassette-tape storage, and the software that came with it was a version of BASIC that Wozniak wrote himself. Two hundred of the machines were made, at $666.66 each.

"I always wanted a computer. One day I realized, 'Hey, microprocessors have gotten cheap enough that I can build myself a computer.' But Jobs was thinking a step further — he thought this was something we could build and sell to other people," Wozniak recalled in an early Apple interview video.

Closer to the personal computer we use today is the Apple II. Besides a faster processor, it had a case that made the toy look finished. On looks alone, the Apple I was an engineer's toy; the Apple II could catch the eye of someone out shopping for home appliances before they even knew what it was for. It built in a keyboard and offered an optional monitor. Plug it in, switch it on, and the rainbow-striped Apple logo appeared — the Apple II could already show color images.

Open Design Left Room for More Imagination

One important feature of the Apple II was the "expansion card." Its advantage: beyond the machine you had bought, you could install new capabilities made by Apple itself or by outside companies — which buried quite a few "easter eggs" inside a personal computer.

In the laptop era you rarely hear the words "expansion card" anymore, but the way a personal computer works with other peripherals has not changed much since 1976. The CPU, hard drive, flash memory, networking and other hardware built onto the motherboard still talk to the computer around one shared standard, exactly as they did 40 years ago.

In 1978 the floppy disk drive appeared, and with it a market for software. Open design left room for more imagination. The software that shipped with the Apple I was the BASIC Wozniak wrote himself — BASIC, by the way, stands for "Beginner's All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code." It was a programming language, but it was still a big step toward making the computer easier to use. Later Microsoft, whose engineering was further along, took that job over.

In 1979 Microsoft's BASIC became standard on the Apple II. In Microsoft's first few years, Apple was one of its most important customers. Around the same time Apple also released an optional operating system, Apple DOS.

But what really made people feel computers had become easier to use was the growing supply of software to buy. In 1979 came a spreadsheet program called VisiCalc, much like the Excel you know today. It gave people a real tool for office work, and it is a big reason the Apple II kept selling for more than a decade.

Even people with no exposure to programming — not even simple BASIC — began to understand computers after that. Take the chance to think back: since you first touched a computer, which pieces of software have stayed with you?

Steve Wozniak

Why Has Your Computer Kept Getting Smaller?

When you pull an iPhone out of your pocket, or glance at the newest ultra-thin MacBook while passing an Apple store, you probably don't stop to think how we got here from that slightly odd Apple I, which asked you to supply your own case, power supply, keyboard and monitor. What made these machines smaller, lighter, simpler?

Hardware. Flash memory is now cheap enough to replace the hard drive. With an Intel Core M processor, thermal design power has fallen so far that no fan is needed. Gordon Moore, one of Intel's founders, made a prediction in 1965: at a constant price, the number of components that fit on an integrated circuit would roughly double every 18 to 24 months, and performance would double with it. In other words, as technology moved quickly, the chips and processors working inside a computer would keep getting faster and cheaper. That is also why Wozniak built the Apple I in the first place — processors had become small enough and cheap enough that the age of the hulking machine could end.

Over 40 years, the companies supplying Apple's processors have changed three times. The earliest Apple products used MOS processors, developed by a group of people who had left Motorola to work on their own. By the Apple Lisa and the Macintosh, Apple was using Motorola's chips, which performed well for the era. By 1994 Apple had moved to the PowerPC processor, developed jointly by IBM, Motorola and Apple. After 2006 it began working with Intel, and still does.

Who Did Woz's One Line Wake Up in the End?

From the rise of IBM, to Microsoft's operating systems, to the arrival of Yahoo, to today's social networks — all of it came out of the line Wozniak typed at 10 p.m. on June 29, 1975. Here is what the world went through in those 40 years.

1. 1975–1984: The Early Personal Computer Appears, and Tech Startups Have Their Era

In the mid-1970s, once chip costs came down, a crowd of personal computers in every shape emerged; Atari and the Micral were among them.

But next to Apple's products of the time, the Apple II above all, rivals' personal computers were not "personal" enough — they were still stuck in the narrow territory of programming tools. In 1978, with VisiCalc, computers began to appeal to people who were not technical hobbyists, and that was the reason for its success.

2. 1985–1993: The PC Moves Into the Office, and Microsoft and Intel Take Over

In 1984, to sell the Apple Macintosh, Apple ran a 60-second commercial still considered a classic today, named 1984. Borrowing the irony of George Orwell's novel about a totalitarian state, Apple cast itself as the rebel and cast IBM — then the overlord of the entire computer industry — as Big Brother.

The IBM PC arrived in 1981. It, and more importantly the IBM-compatible machines built by companies such as HP and Dell, created an era of commercial personal computers. But the personal-computer era IBM set in motion ended up having little to do with IBM; the gains went to Microsoft and Intel, the companies that supplied IBM with its operating system and its CPU.

In 1985 Microsoft released Windows 1.0, which ran on every IBM PC. The IBM PC took the personal computer into a commercial era, but it was Microsoft that showed more people in that period how much easier a computer could be to use. The personal computer began moving into the office.

By the early 1990s Bill Gates could see clearly that the personal computer would change how every company worked, and Microsoft put money into office software — the Office suite, plus server software and server operating systems for businesses. The other winner of the period was Intel. As the CPU supplier, it held the market firmly from the early '90s on, and peaked in 2000.

3. 1994–2001: The Internet Arrives

1994 was a special year. David Filo and Jerry Yang founded Jerry and David's Guide to the World Wide Web, a site later renamed Yahoo. At first it was the Yellow Pages of the web, gathering all kinds of information and selling advertising. That same year Netscape was founded, supplying a browser for personal computers. The next year Netscape went public; a stock priced at $14 rose to $75 the same day. People believed in these businesses. Through personal computers, people could see more information. AOL went into the business of selling software and providing internet service — a provider that got you online over a dial-up line.

Those years produced many internet companies that would eventually show us a much larger world: Netflix, which started in online movie rental; Amazon, which started selling books online; eBay, which started by letting people shop and bid online. China's Alibaba and Tencent also appeared. This was the internet's exploratory phase, and people were full of curiosity about it. It was also the phase in which internet-related share prices climbed fast on stock markets across Europe, the United States and Asia, producing a speculative bubble. In 2001 the bubble burst completely, and the tech industry stayed cold for several years.

4. 2002 to Today: The Internet Turns to Face the Individual

Being the sort of people who ask for the Wi-Fi password the moment we walk into a coffee shop, we now know exactly what the internet is for: scrolling Moments, playing a game, checking which cinema is nearby, or shopping on Taobao. Ten years ago the internet was a novelty that invited daydreams, but we were far less clear about what it was for.

After 2005 the internet industry warmed up again. Capital did not pour in as wildly as before, but PC and broadband costs kept falling, which put more people online more cheaply. Companies that genuinely met people's needs appeared in large numbers and found ways to make money. Companies that changed how people live — Google, Facebook, Alibaba, Amazon — rose during this stage. The internet came closer to us still as the computer kept shrinking, until it became the phone in your pocket. By now the personal computer has actually become less important; in 2007 the iPhone started a new trend, smartphones spread, and app stores began changing how people live.

What Does the Computer Amount to Now?

Forty years ago the computer was a programming tool. The Apple II's open design turned it into a piece of office equipment, or, for some people, a game machine. Then came the Macintosh, and Photoshop was born on it, bringing layout and photo editing that photographers and writers needed more and more.

The iMac G3 in 1998 added a CD-ROM drive, and the computer became a music player. Later, film editors, sound engineers and animators started working on it.

When we talk about the personal computer today, much of the time we only mean laptops and desktops — a concept already fading. So what is it now? Open your phone and look at the apps you use most: traveling, booking a car, posting your thoughts, reserving a restaurant, reading books, checking the news, taking photos, recording audio, finding your way, sending mail…

As for Woz himself, his career as an inventor did not carry on alongside the personal computer. In 1981, soon after getting his pilot's license, Wozniak crashed his plane on the way to San Diego. The accident left him with amnesia.

Five weeks later his memory came back, and he decided to leave Apple and start a new life — founding a few companies, teaching children to program. It is not the inspirational story of Jobs running Apple twice, but who is to say it was not a good choice? After all, the personal computer he helped push into the world has soaked all the way through our civilization, and it is not going to stop.