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These photos Apple's first employees showed us from the company's earliest days are absolutely wonderful (AAPL)

Posted May 01, 2015 11:00 pm

Jim Edwards

The year was 1977. Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak had barely moved out of the Jobs' family garage to the company's first official corporate address, 20863 Stevens Creek Blvd., (Building 3, Suite C) in Cupertino, Calif.

The pair had successfully begun shipping their first computer, a naked circuit board called Apple I. It had neither a keyboard nor a screen, and functioned more as part of a kit that computer hobbyists could build into something more useful, if they knew what they were doing.

Two early Apple employees, Bob Martinengo and Mark Johnson, spoke to Business Insider about what it was like working with the two Steves back in the days when nobody knew what Apple was. They passed on to us this collection of images from Apple's early days. We've combined it with some other early Apple images from Business Insider's archives. This week, a handful of Steve Jobs' old business cards went up for auction, and we've got images of those too.

The images are remarkable because they show life at Apple before the period when everyone realized the company was going to change the world. For them, it was just a paycheck. And, of course, carrying and using a camera in the 1970s took a lot more effort than it does today. They weren't used daily, the way phone cameras are now  so early Apple images are relatively rare.

This image (below) shows Chrisann Brennan, Mark Johnson, and Robert Martinengo standing in front of what appears to be a pile of boxes containing the Apple II.

"It was obviously a heck of a lot of fun," Martinengo says. (He now works at AMAC Accessibility, a company that makes products and services for disabled students.)

Brennan, 22 at the time, had become Jobs' girlfriend in high school when she was 17, a relationship he later trashed when she became pregnant. Jobs disavowed the child, Lisa, despite naming the Apple Lisa machine (in development in 1978) after her. Jobs only admitted Lisa was his daughter when she reached her teens.

Johnson, like Martinengo, was employed to assemble the Apple II. "This photo (above) was taken on a Friday," Johnson says. "We were waiting for UPS to pick up the 57 Apple II computers that were completed. The reason the photo was taken was because that was the first time that we tested, assembled and shipped 57 units in one work week. A big accomplishment back then for the team."

This 1978 image shows more of the Apple II team, including Steve Jobs:

From left to right: Elmer Baum, Mike Markkula, Gary Martin, Andre Dubois, Steve Jobs, Sue Cabannis, Mike Scott, and Don Breuner. Standing in the rear is Mark Johnson.

Note that in this photo, Jobs appears to be arguing with Mike Scott, the first president of the company, who had been brought in to keep a leash on Jobs. This was a typical event, Johnson says.

Elmer Baum was an engineer. "He was a senior, responsible person they brought," Johnson says. "He worked in production and engineering. He was a little bit grumpy, 'you kids get off my lawn!' kind of guy." Baum's nephew, Jesse Berger, tells us, "He had a wonderful sense of humor, especially about himself, and was amused to find himself working with all these computer whizzes &#133; After having been a pioneer in early wireless communications, working on classified programs during and after WWII, he was tickled to be working again on cutting-edge endeavors."

Here's an early set of Apple company files, from Digibarn.

Mike Markulla was the venture capitalist who provided Apple's first proper funding and installed real management. He used to drive a Corvette Stingray. (Johnson, who was a teenager at the time, said he did get a ride in it once.)

<img style="float:right;" src="http://static2.businessinsider.com/image/52bc94e8ecad042c35694a05-527-459/mike_markkula_steve_jobs1.jpg" border="0" alt="mike markkula steve jobs" width="480">Andre Dubois is believed to have been Apple's first European sales manager. Sue Cabannis was the office manager. Gary Martin worked in accounting. Don Bruener was a hardware technician.

The Apple II was the machine that really put Apple on the map: An integrated home computer with a keyboard and screen, that anybody could use.

Here's another shot of the crew on the Apple II team, with the product in the background on a set of racks:

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