June 29, 1975 Wozniak tested his first working prototype, displaying a few letters and running sample programs. It was the first time in history that a character displayed on a TV screen was generated by a home computer. (
Wikipedia)
A lot of us here are old enough to remember early computer history, since we lived it. We were all homebrewing the same things. (My first computer was a homebuilt electronic analog sliderule around 1964.)
The technology to display typed characters on a TV was well known and written up in major magazines like Radio Electronics, starting with the TV Typewriter in 1973. Any engineer worth his salt would've read those articles.
People were already using a TV as display on other home computers via terminal devices like the
TV Typewriter II (first sold January 1975).
He also didn't demonstrate his Apple I to the Homebrew Computer Club until July 1976. The S-100 bus Cromemco Dazzler color graphics board had already been demonstrated to the Club in November 1975, which shows that everyone was thinking along the same lines.
If what he claims is true and Steve Wozniak was the first one to see a letter appear on screen right after he hit a key, than no – home computers would never have become personal without Apple, which wasn't founded until a year later.
When his book said, "
It was the first time in history anyone had typed a character on a keyboard and seen it show up on the screen right in front of them.", that was of course wildly incorrect as written.
Video displays and keyboards had existed on standalone computers for years before he made his homebrew raster output circuit. Witness the 1973 Xerox Alta. So again, his claim needs more qualifiers on it.
Things don't just happen at the same time. One is always the inspiration for all the others.
On the contrary, in the history of home/personal computers, lots of things were invented at nearly the same time. The reason was that everyone suddenly had the same access to low priced microprocessors, which allowed anyone with talent to build microcomputers.
As I noted above, expensive computers had been doing far more graphics for years. Once chip prices had come down to where hobbyists all over the world could afford to duplicate such features, they did.
In fact, a month
BEFORE the board-only Apple I kit went on sale in July 1976, Processor Technologies had shown off their ready-to-buy all-in-one personal computer design, the Sol-20, which also had a video circuit built-in (and expansion bus).
Apple sold about 200 of their Apple I. Processor Technologies sold 10,000 of their Sol-20. (Unfortunately PT was badly mismanaged and soon folded. Still, many still consider it to be the first all-in-one home computer, as the Apple II didn't come out until 1977.)
The nail in the history coffin comes from Woz himself, in an article he wrote for the 1984 book, Digital Deli:
"These turned out to be common features for the personal computers that have come out since that time. We weren't quite the first to offer a keyboard and video output, but we were close."
Steve Wozniak
This is not to take away the things he did. Just pointing out that he was not alone. Everyone had much of the same ideas. The personal computer was on its way no matter what.
