A computer built in the 1970s that helped launch the personal computer age as well as a trillion-dollar company has sold for $375,000. The fully functioning Apple-1 auctioned by Boston-based RR Auction was sold at a live sale Tuesday. RR says the winning bid came from a U.S.-based businessman who wishes to remain anonymous. The computer is one of 60 or so remaining of the original 200 designed and built by Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak in 1976 and 1977, and one of 16 that still works. A computer built in the 1970s that helped launch the personal computer age as well as a trillion-dollar company has sold for $375,000.

A piece of computer history that helped launch a trillion dollar company is hitting the auction block and is expected to fetch $300,000 (£230,500). A rare, fully-functioning Apple-1 being auctioned by Boston-based RR Auction in September is one of only 60 or so remaining computers from the original 200 made. The machines were designed and hand-built by Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak in 1976 and 1977 and originally sold for about $666 (£511) to local enthusiasts. The Apple-1 was restored to its original, operational state by expert Corey Cohen. The system operated without fault for approximately eight hours in a recent test and will even ship with its original keyboard designed and built during the 1970s.

Computers have been pretending to have feelings since the first Macintosh computer screen showed a smiley face on startup back in 1984. Or maybe earlier, if you count Star Wars' R2-D2 and C-3PO (though it took human actors inside to make those feelings come out). Almost as long as people have interacted with machines, they've wanted to have some reassurance that the machines were listening to them. Software designers (and special effects designers, too) used sleight of hand to give the impression of feelings to very early computers. Those "feelings" were exchanged only one way: No one really thought that the early Mac was happy, and it certainly didn't know if the user was smiling back. Let's face it, with early computers, it didn't matter.

"Dials and buttons, knobs and switches; they're very charming," says James Ball, the digital art director behind a new photography series called Guide to Computing, which celebrates early computers. Ball, who works under the pseudonym Docubyte, began the project after developing a fascination and affection for such retro devices. "It's rare now to find any machine that you can touch and interact with," he says. "Computers now are all touch screens, slick and super-slim." Ball feels that computers that pre-date the Apple era aren't widely considered to be design pieces, and his nostalgia for this earlier, more "naive" aesthetic led him to seek out and photograph a range of machines that date from the latter half of the 20th century, representing them as if they were new and desirable products.