Prior to the return of Steve Jobs, Apple had been planning on making its own company museum. Those plans changed, however, once Mr. Jobs was back on board, and instead the documents and other items were donated to Stanford University’s Silicon Valley Archives.
The University was glad for the donation and quickly loaded two moving trucks with the donated artifacts including videos, marketing materials, company documents, and more. The artifacts make up the single largest collection of historic Apple items anywhere.
“Through this one collection you can trace out the evolution of the personal computer,” Stanford historian Leslie Berlin told the Associated Press. “These sorts of documents are as close as you get to the unmediated story of what really happened.”
Other Apple-related items are joining the collection, too, thanks to donations from former employees, business partners and Apple fans.
The collection fills over 600 square feet of shelf space at the University’s storage facility — a location that isn’t publicly known.
Apple started out in a garage, but quickly grew into a much larger company thanks to the affordable and user-friendly computers Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak were selling. Following the success of the Apple II, the company went on to make the Macintosh, iPod, iPhone, and iPad.
Other items in the collection include photos of Steve Jobs when he ran NeXT, a US$5,000 loan agreement from Apple’s early days, and a letter from a printer calling Mr. Jobs a “joker” and warning his business associates away from Apple.