A Look at Stanford's Apple Collection [Video]

Stanford's Apple Collection takes up over 600 feet of shelf space and with it you can trace out the evolution of the personal computer, reports the Associated Press.

The collection was donated to the university shortly after Steve Jobs returned to the company in 1997. Apple was originally planning to open a company museum but decided to give two moving trucks full of documents, books, software, videotapes, and marketing material to Stanford instead.


"Through this one collection you can trace out the evolution of the personal computer," said Stanford historian Leslie Berlin. "These sorts of documents are as close as you get to the unmediated story of what really happened."

One highlight of the collection is an interview with Jobs and Wozniak where they talk about how Apple got its name.

"I remember driving down Highway 85," Wozniak says. "We're on the freeway, and Steve mentions, `I've got a name: Apple Computer.' We kept thinking of other alternatives to that name, and we couldn't think of anything better."

"And also remember that I worked at Atari, and it got us ahead of Atari in the phonebook," adds Jobs.


Other Highlights of the Apple Collection:
● Thousands of photos by photographer Douglas Menuez, who documented Jobs' years at NeXT Computer, which he founded in 1985 after he was pushed out of Apple.
● A company video spoofing the 1984 movie "Ghost Busters," with Jobs and other executives playing "Blue Busters," a reference to rival IBM.
● Handwritten financial records showing early sales of Apple II, one of the first mass-market computers.
● An April 1976 agreement for a $5,000 loan to Apple Computer and its three co-founders: Jobs, Wozniak and Ronald Wayne, who pulled out of the company less than two weeks after its founding.
● A 1976 letter written by a printer who had just met Jobs and Wozniak and warns his colleagues about the young entrepreneurs: "This joker (Jobs) is going to be calling you ... They are two guys, they build kits, operate out of a garage."

Take a look at a couple interesting videos below...

[via 9to5Mac]