Paul Terrell

Paul Jay Terrell is an American businessman and an early personal computer. He helped to popularize personal computing to the hobbyist and home computing markets, and was the first retailer to sell an Apple Computer—the Apple I.

Byte Shop
Paul Terrell started the Byte Shop in Mountain View, California as an dealer on December 8, 1975, preceded only by The Computer Store in West Los Angeles. By January, Terrell was approached by individuals who wanted to open their own stores. He signed dealership agreements with them, whereby he would take a percentage of their profits, and soon there were Byte Shops in Santa Clara, San Jose, Palo Alto,, and.

In March 1976, Terrell incorporated as Byte, Inc. and was one of the notable early computer retailers, including Dick Heiser's The Computer Store in Los Angeles, the Peachtree in Atlanta, and Dick Brown in Boston.

Apple I
The Byte Shop was the first retailer of the original Apple I computer. At the time Steve Jobs was planning to sell for $40, but Terrell told him that he would be interested in the machine only if it came fully assembled, and promised to order 50 of the machines and pay $500.00 each on delivery.

Jobs contacted Cramer Electronics to order the components he needed to assemble the Apple I Computer. When asked how he was going to pay for the parts and he replied, "I have this purchase order from the Byte Shop chain of computer stores for 50 of my computers and the payment terms are COD. If you give me the parts on a terms I can build and deliver the computers in that time frame, collect my money from Terrell at the Byte Shop and pay you." The credit manager called Paul Terrell and verified the validity of the purchase order.

Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak and their small crew spent day and night building and testing the computers and delivered to Terrell on time to pay his suppliers and have a profit left over for their celebration and next order.

Expansion
Terrell grew the enterprise from the first company-owned store in Mountain View into a chain of dealerships and eventually into a franchise operation that reached from the United States to Japan.

Byte, Inc. was not only involved in the expansion of its retail chain of stores but began a manufacturing operation to build its own proprietary BYT-8 computer which was provided only to Byte Shop stores. This gave both Byte Inc. and its Byte Shops a better profit margin than could be achieved by just distributing the computers of the other computer manufacturers at the time.

Legacy
In 1977, Terrell sold his chain of 58 Byte Shops to John Peers of Logical Machine Corporation. Many of the original Byte Shop dealers eventually became independent as the personal computer marketplace grew and became segmented by the various uses and applications the PC was developing. Hobby computer stores were becoming business centers and IBM was entering the market with a computer of its own which over time would become the standard in the industry. Byte Shops of Arizona became and developed into a major national distributor as well as having its own chain of stores. Byte Shop Northwest dominated its geographical area and was acquired by in 1985 when they elected to get into computer stores.

Media portrayals
Terrell was portrayed by in the theatrical biopic .

Articles

 * Behold, Some of the First Apple Computer Photos Ever by Henry McCracken at Time (2012-11-22)