Back in the mid to late 1990s, Apple Computer Corporation operated a service and manufacturing facility in Fountain, Colorado, just south of Colorado Springs.
I was privileged to have worked there for about a year as an electronics technician in the service department, the function of which was to troubleshoot, repair, and test the current Apple desktop computers that were customer returns.
The Apple engineer who was overseeing the department was a longtime employee, hailing from the earliest days of the company in California.
Sadly, I no longer remember the gentleman's name...
Anyway, he would conduct a weekly team meeting, where he would engage in discussions of technical subjects concerning the operation and repair of Apple products.
It was at one of these meetings that he brought along a very interesting surprise for 'show-and-tell'.
It was one of the three original hand-built prototype computers that Steve Jobs and Steve Wosniak had developed in the garage days of Apple.
At the time, Jobs owned one of the original computers, a second was already in the Smithsonian, and the third was owned by this engineer.
He brought the device in to our meeting room and allowed all of us to play and poke around with it. He didn't power it up, but it was fun to explore the hand wound memory core components and the immense amount of other wiring, all encased in a simply-built wooden enclosure.
The engineer explained that this prototype unit was the centerpiece of his personal collection of Apple computers, which included every single model the company had produced to date (more on this in my next post).
I felt very privileged to have been one of the few people in the world to have actually been allowed to see and tinker with this historic device up-close and hands-on.
I am eternally grateful to this long-ago engineer in providing the opportunity!
Cheers!
