Apple Artifacts Reveal Silicon Valley History
Apple’s earliest computers, recently “object photographed” by Stanford University Libraries and exhibited in Green Library, are used in Making History in Silicon Valley course.
Throughout this Autumn Quarter, Stanford undergraduate students have enjoyed examining historical hardware from the corporate records of Apple Computer, Inc., donated to Stanford University Libraries in 1997.
The items, including prototypes and finished products of the Apple I and II, Lisa, Macintosh, and Newton models, were retrieved for further processing and photography by the Libraries’ Digital Production Group before being placed in Special Collections for use by researchers.
“With these unusual and 3D items as with the Apple computers,” said Digital Imaging Production Coordinator Chris Hacker, “our goal is to communicate the object to the viewer as comprehensively as possible. This is standard practice for flat materials and books - we make sure that everything is captured including blank pages, the spines and edges of books, things hidden under taped-down items in scrapbooks, really anything that’s there - so researchers and interested people looking at the item from anywhere in the world won’t wonder if there’s anything they’re missing by not looking at it in person. This is not the approach that museums typically take for complex objects, opting instead for representational images of the whole object instead of getting into the details.”
The Digital Production Group applied an experimental “object photography” technique to the Apple computers and placed the images on its webpage of examples of Uncommon & 3D Objects in Special Collections, so that the computers can be studied remotely. Other objects on the webpage include a grimoire scroll, an album of pressed algae, archaeological rubbings, folding fans, and a “cartonnage” cluster of papyrus fragments likely recovered from a mummy.
The computers were also exhibited briefly in Green Library’s Hohbach Hall, home of the Silicon Valley Archives.
The temporary exhibit in the display cases of Hohbach Hall included an Apple I c. 1976, a prototype of the Apple II c. 1977, a “Wooden Lisa” c. 1981 carved for marketing purposes, a Newton tablet c. 1993 that failed to find commercial success but is now considered a predecessor to the iPhone, and the ten millionth Macintosh, manufactured nine years after the Mac's 1984 Super Bowl commercial famously based on George Orwell’s novel Nineteen Eighty-Four. A handwritten printer’s note c. 1976, also on view, expressed skepticism about Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak, who were perceived as two college dropouts, building kits and operating out of a garage. For students, seeing the computers presented in classroom settings truly made the history of Silicon Valley come alive to them.
Making History in Silicon Valley is an undergraduate course taught by lecturer Charles Petersen, the Harold C. Hohbach Historian at the Silicon Valley Archives. The course gives students additional opportunities to conduct archival research or complete a capstone project. Students are not only studying the centuries-long history of the region now known as Silicon Valley but also recording oral histories for deposit into the Silicon Valley Archives. The subjects of the interviews, selected by the students, include founders and CEOs of corporations, entrepreneurs in theater and dance at the intersection of art and public service, and Asian American owners of farms and nurseries.
In a recent session, Stanford students Alexis Jones, Kaylee Chan, Jade Berry, and Henry Segal scrutinized and discussed with Petersen the early Apple computers. At that time, Petersen explained, Apple usually sold components and computer boards to purchasers who built or supplied their own outer casings. Their choices, whether unpainted plywood or varnished hardwood and plastic carefully labelled “Apple I,” say much about their thoughts on the newly invented devices. One student aptly compared the use of wooden housing to the wooden trim in 1970s automobiles. All agreed that the early models were more practical than aesthetic.
“Thanks to the Silicon Valley Archives," said Petersen, "I can teach the history of the Valley in a way that would be impossible anywhere else in the world. It’s amazing to go from giving a lecture on the origins of the personal computer industry to watching students go through the founding records of Apple themselves — the archives make history come alive, and give students a sense that history is not just a story they inherit but something they can make and remake on their own. Artifacts like the Apple hardware collection in particular bring this history to life."