Bell & Howell making Apples?

From: Jeff Kaneko <Jeff.Kaneko_at_ifrsys.com>
Date: Thu Oct 16 10:45:54 1997

 
> > 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
Received on Thu Oct 16 1997 - 10:45:54 BST