Early Apple computer fetches close to $1m at auction

A vintage 1976 Apple-1 computer. Photo: Supplied/Bonhams

A vintage Apple computer, one of only 50 made in Steve Jobs' garage in 1976, sold for $US905,000 ($A979,172) at auction on Wednesday.

Bonhams auction house said the winning bid, which includes its premium, came from The Henry Ford museum and overtook a previous high price of more than $US671,000 paid in Germany in 2013..

The computer, which had been estimated to sell for $US300,000 to $US500,000, has an intact motherboard and a vintage keyboard and monitor. It also has a power supply contained in a wooden box and two tape decks, Bonhams said.

'The provenance on the Apple-1 is excellent and the condition is outstanding, so it was not surprising that it did so well,' the auction house's specialist for the sale, Cassandra Hatton, said in a statement.

'We are thrilled to have broken the world record for its sale, and are even more thrilled that it is going to a wonderful new home at the Henry Ford Museum.'

Henry Ford President Patricia Mooradian said in a statement the Apple-1 was not only innovative, but 'a key artifact in the foundation of the digital revolution'.

There were few buyers for the first Apple computers until Paul Terrell, owner of electronics retailer Byte Shop, placed an order for 50 and sold them for $666.66 each.

After that initial success, Jobs and Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak produced another 150 and sold them to friends and other vendors.

An Apple-1 computer sold in 2013 in Cologne, Germany, for $US671,400. Apple, the maker of iPads, iPhones and iMac computers, is based in Cupertino, California.

The auction was Bonhams' first in New York City of items connected to science and technology. Other lots included a letter by Charles Darwin to a colleague about the sex life of barnacles and the earliest electrical keyboard, a Helmholtz sound synthesizer from 1905. There were a number of globes, books and other documents and a telescope from 1870. There also was a framed painted portrait of Bill Gates.

In the letter, which sold for $US25,000, Darwin says he wants to learn more about the sex act of barnacles, such things as 'were the specimens under water at times' and 'if the recipient was in full vigor?'

Read also: AP, Reuters