At 03:50 PM
10/13/97 -0700, you wrote:
Disk]['s. Did Apple license Bell & Howell to make these machines? If they
did, did they license other companies as well?
Yes and they were all black. I don't think Apple ever licensed the design
to any other company, and I'm surprised that they even licensed it at all.
My money says that Apple licensed the II to B&H as a way of getting into
schools. B&H made projectors and such for the school market and so buyers
are far more likely to buy a Bell and Howell computer than some machine from
some company nobody ever heard of.
And once the computers were in place, Apple could get in the door by selling
Bell and Howell clones...
Certainly both possible, but I would be more willing to believe that B&H
contracted with Apple to supply the rebadged units to support their
technical training and correspondence courses.
^^^^^^^^^ ^^^^^^^^ ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ - don
This sounds right to me; IIRC, in the mid to late 70's Bell & Howell
was really into selling big, fancy correspondence electronics
training, ala C.I.E. (from which I got most of my formal training,
BTW).
It seems you got a Heathkit Color TV, some heath test equipment, etc.
The ads showed up alot in Mechanix Illustrated, Popular Electronics,
etc. I've never seen it, but I imagine later training programs in
computer programming would have used these Black Apples.
As an aside, Bell+Howell certainly wasn't new to the education
scene-- I can remember when I was in grade school, when Sr. Mary
Painful would show a film strip, she would break out the charcoal
and teal B+H filmstrip projector. . . . .
Jeff