In the fall of 1975, a spiritual wanderer/aspiring techie by the name of Steve Jobs noticed that his Californian friends were getting excited about model-kit computers that you build for your at-home use. 

He asked his buddy Steve Wozniak if he'd like to build a circuit board for the computer kit enthusiasts, making them for $25 and selling them for $50. 

Then he went to the electronics shop — and things got interesting. 

Cal Newport describes the scene: 

Steve arrived barefoot at the Byte Shop, Paul Terrell's pioneering Mountain View computer store, and offered Terrell the circuit boards for sale. Terrell didn't want to sell plain boards, but said he would buy fully assembled computers. He would pay $500 for each, and wanted fifty as soon as they could be delivered.

Jobs jumped at the opportunity to make an even larger amount of money and began scrounging together startup capital. It was in this unexpected windfall that Apple Computer was born. 

So without Terrell's beckoning, we wouldn't have Apple.