July 30, 1979: Lisa Project Gets Rolling

Trip Hawkins (of Electronic Arts fame) and Steve Jobs were looking for a machine that would be better than the Apple II. They came up with a rather boring and conventional machine that was tagetted to ship in 1981.

The machine was supposed to sell for two thousand dollars, feature one of those thankfully forgotten built in green phosphor monitor and a built in keyboard.

As seemingly "me too" as the machine seems in retrospect, the concept was deemed interesting enough to pursue. Though the machine would end up radically different (after a later visit to PARC) Apple hired a project manager, Ken Rothmuller from Hewlett-Packard, to get the Lisa rolling project rolling on July 30, 1979.