Building a Business on the Apple II

It wasn’t easy, but it worked.

Photo by Museums Victoria on Unsplash

Our Milwaukee audio-visual business was based on writing. Most audio-visual companies were centered around photography and graphics, and we had those. But our unique selling proposition was taking full responsibility for the project, from concept to completion.

This was different than the norm; most A-V scripts were written by in-house corporate pr departments or by writers at their ad agencies, who then found a slide house to finish the job.

An Introduction to Computers

In the late ’70s, we were using dictation to get out scripts done. They were then transcribed via typewriter by typists. We had two on staff. Then, we got our first world processing machine to replace the typewriters. Computers were revving up then, and big-office operations used Wangs (a word-processing machine company) or some networked solution with 3 or 4 terminals.

These solutions were out of our budget. Then, stand-alone systems popped up, and we could afford one called “Archive”. The Archive word processor was based on CP/M, an early operating system that required special cards, and did word processing with an off-the-shelf software solution called “Wordstar.”

Our secretary picked up wordstar pretty quick. Control XC, copy; Control XV, paste. Control XP, print.

I thought, “That’s pretty neat!”

I didn’t want to buck our internal system — it worked well enough, and dictation helped the voice of our scripts — they sounded more natural than lengthy , verbose, typical a-v scripts.

But I wanted a computer, full stop.

Enter the Apple II

The personal computer of the day — preceding anything from IBM — was the APPLE II. I went to a local computer store and they only carried expensive networked solutions. Then I discovered an Apple Shop, North Shore Computers down the road in Glendale. They had a very small shop, but I was dazzled by the large amounts of software that surrounded me. I explained my business use to them, and they said that in fact, Wordstar would work on the Apple with a C/PM card (the Apple had slots for add-in devices.)

Surre enough, I was soon heading home with an Apple, a C/PM card, Wordstar and something called Visicalc they convinced me I needed. Oh, and copy of a game called “The Prisoner”, based on the famous 17-episode series starring Patrick McGoohan.

I set up the Apple, it’s two external floppy disc drives, the mouse and keyboard and installed the software After 5 hours playing “The Prisoner”, I tried out WordStar. AMAZING. But when I tried out Visicalc, I knew the world had changed. You could do all of that with numbers? Never a great math student, I was enthralled by the possibilities.

I soon got a modem to tie in with local bulletin boards, national boards like “The Source” and “Compuserve”, and I was hooked.

My firm had landed a big account through a local Ad Agency that liked our work on one of the Milwaukee Ad Club Awards shows. They hired us for their client, the Kirby Vacuum Cleaner Company. I had to go to New York to audition talent for this live combo stage play / a-v extravaganza, and also to laiase with the firm we had hired to stage the event.

I had a carrying case made for the Apple II and went to New York City to stay at my brother’s apartment and work up sides for the auditions. (“Sides” is actor talk; it means scripts.)

The Kirby Stage Show

Not much later, after a successful Kirby Show, I decided to split from the firm I had founded and begin anew. We had won a big account in New Jersey with AT&T International. I kept the video portion (interactive laserdiscs) and my former company kept the multi-image slide show. I had my eye on video as the next big thing.

To get start-up capital, I used Visicalc to build a pro-forma look at the company based on future earnings, which included the AT&T budget plus some sky-blue estimates of future customers.

The banker was so impressed with the spreadsheet we got our capital right away.

Modems, Scripts, and X-Term

To assuage the New Jersey client’s fears about using a Midwestern firm for a big job like this I rented an office on 54th Street and 6th Avenue in New York and convinced one of our more adventurous writers to move to NYC to man the office. She gladly accepted, and I set her up with an Apple II, a modem, a printer, and a program called x-term that would be used to send script drafts back and forth. She got an apartment, and when I visited New York I’d surreptitiously stay in the office… we had equipped it with a nine-projector rig and a pull-out sleeper couch. The scripts moved back and forth like lightning, compared even to fed-ex overnight (we eventually got fax machines).

And, Finally…

Two years later, I moved to a Macintosh II because of its graphic capabilities — perfect, of course, for storyboards.

But my trusty Apple II was happily adopted by my son, Matt. He stayed with my trusty Apple II for years, until I finally got him a Mac when the Mac came out with color capabilities (and a Dos Card to Play IBM games).

But I’d be nowhere today careerwise if it hadn’t been for my old faithful, the Apple II. Thanks, Woz and Steve.