Technology History | San Francisco Civic Auditorium — The Apple II Arrived in a Plastic Case

Twelve thousand people came through this building over two days in April 1977, roughly double what the organisers had planned for.

The first West Coast Computer Faire ran here on 16 and 17 April, with about 180 exhibitors spread between the auditorium and Brooks Hall underneath the plaza.

Jim Warren and Bob Reiling put it together on a gamble. Warren had lost his first venue, took this hall at a rate that terrified him, and worked out on a napkin that he might break even.

Apple's booth sat near the entrance, and what stood on it was a computer in a beige plastic case with the keyboard built in.

That was the argument. Every rival machine on the floor was a metal box with switches, a kit, or a bare board the buyer had to house himself.

The Apple II had colour graphics, a speaker, BASIC in ROM and seven expansion slots, and it looked like an appliance rather than a project.

It was shown here, not sold here. The first units shipped on 10 June 1977 at $1,298 with four kilobytes of memory, and a well-equipped machine with 48K ran to several thousand dollars.

Price was its weakness against the two machines that arrived the same year: the Commodore PET, demonstrated at this faire by Chuck Peddle, and the Tandy TRS-80 that August, both cheaper and both shipping with a screen.

None of the three was the first personal computer, and each has a fair claim to being the first that an ordinary buyer could take home and switch on.

The Apple II outlasted both. Production continued into November 1993, sixteen years, which is an unusual lifespan for anything in this industry.

The hall is still here on Grove Street, working as a concert venue under the name Bill Graham Civic Auditorium.

Look above the three arched windows on the Grove Street front and the older name is still cut into the stone: Exposition Auditorium.

Cover: the auditorium's Grove Street facade. The second photograph shows a later Apple II system with disk drives and monitor, at the Musée Bolo in Lausanne.

Photos: Sanfranman59, CC BY-SA 4.0; Rama and Musée Bolo, CC BY-SA 2.0 FR, via Wikimedia Commons.