A story that seemed destined to become a routine cleaning of a storage room turned into a historic invention for computing. In 2023, employees of the British company Just Clear found out Two old computers that had been forgotten in boxes in London for years. However, what they didn’t imagine was that they were looking at some of the first desktop microcomputers in history.
The devices were a 1972 Q1 and a Q1 Lite, two machines of which very few known copies remain. In fact, auction house Heritage Auctions explained that the tools found represent only two of the three surviving Q1s when they were discovered.
Two computers that made history long before Apple
For perspective, the original Q1 began production in December 1972, 4 years before the Apple i appeared. It had an 8-bit Intel 8008 microprocessor and It combines a screen, keyboard and printer in the same structureA series of features that made it one of the first integrated desktop computers.
In addition to its lack, Q1 is important on a technical level because of how less accessible it was. As they were devices intended for professional environments, they had a prohibitive price for the time. Despite this, they represent an important advance towards miniaturization of computers when many computer systems still occupy large spaces.
In February 2024, a few months after the discovery, the equipment was put on display at Kingston University alongside other historic machines. After this, Heritage Auctions held its first auction and Both teams reached very attractive prices: While the original Q1 reached £37,179 (just over €44,500), the Q1 Lite sold for £8,316 (around €10,000).
This discovery allows us to recover two fundamental pieces from those early years of personal computing where manufacturers began experimenting with more compact equipment. More than half a century after their production, and who knows how many years forgotten in boxes, they have become collector’s items and tangible evidence of the origins of the modern PC.
Picture | Own creation from a photograph from Heritage Auctions
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