The Apple II Launches the Personal Computer Era

Date

1977

Category

Science, technology & invention

Region

North America (United States)

Era

Contemporary

Significance

The Apple II, unveiled at the West Coast Computer Faire on 16–17 April 1977, helped transform computing from a hobbyist pursuit into a mass-market consumer product.

Designed by Steve Wozniak with a moulded plastic case, built-in keyboard, and colour graphics, it was among the first computers marketed to ordinary households rather than engineers or corporations. Alongside the Commodore PET and Tandy TRS-80, it defined 1977 as the birth year of the personal computer, but the Apple II's expandability and, from 1979, the VisiCalc spreadsheet gave people a practical reason to buy one. The machine turned Apple from a garage startup into an industry leader and seeded a software and hardware ecosystem that reshaped work, education, and eventually daily life. The personal computer it heralded would put processing power on desks worldwide, laying groundwork for the digital economy, the internet's mass adoption, and the information age that followed.

Empires active in 1977

• Soviet Union
  1922 CE – 1991 CE
• British Empire
  1583 CE – 1997 CE
• Portuguese Empire
  1415 CE – 1999 CE
• Yugoslavia
  1918 CE – 1992 CE

Related science, technology & invention events

• Intel Releases the 4004, the First Commercial Microprocessor
  1971
• Invention of the integrated circuit
  1958–1959
• Invention of the transistor at Bell Labs
  December 1947
• IBM Launches the Personal Computer
  1981
• Ray Tomlinson Sends Networked Email and Chooses the @ Symbol
  1971
• First ARPANET message, precursor of the Internet
  29 October 1969

Further reading

A Little History of Science

The wider story

A Little History of Science

William Bynum

Warm, jargon-free tour of discovery from Babylonian stargazers to the genome.

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