Apple LISA
1983
Model 2-10

The first "friendly" personal computer to be sold to the public was Apple Computer Inc.'s LISA. Modeled after prototypes at Xerox's Palo Alto Research Center (PARC), the LISA had a graphical user interface (GUI) which included a mouse to activate commands. Priced at $10,000, the LISA was soon replaced by the affordable Macintosh. Although a commercial flop, Apple's LISA set the standard for how people interact with computers.

The operating environment of this machine is similar to modern GUI "desktops" in use today, and inspired Windows and Macintosh systems. The original LISA 1 used two 5.25 inch floppy disk drives and a 5 megabyte hard drive. These proprietary floppies required special diskettes for their two read/write heads and were prone to failure. Following the Model 1 was the 2-10, the 10 standing for the 10 megabyte hard disk. The 2-10 had a standard 3.5 inch floppy. After the Mac computer became popular, many LISAs were modified to run as Mac XLs.

Donor: Thomas Yonkman