I am very happy to present to you the Apple Lisa papercraft pattern which can be found at the bottom of this post. This was the third pattern I created behind the Amstrad CPC 64 and Commodore 64. My confidence must have been at an all-time high when I embarked on this one because it took until this week to finally complete this one. While this is one of the more detailed projects I’ve completed, getting this pattern to fit together reliably was a frustration. I put this this model on hold three times during its development. Every few months, people interested in this model would encourage me to get back to it. Finally, a fellow (amazing) papercrafter, George agreed to help me finalize the last of the model. Had it not been for his encouragement, I suspect this may not have seen the light of day this year.
Lisa I from the rear
GUIs were foreign to everyone but XEROX users in 83, so a series of integrated reference cards could be pulled from the bottom of the keyboard.
The Apple Lisa was the first to introduce a Graphical User Interface to the masses (ie: wealthy early-adopters) and was aimed on the business community as they would be the only ones at the time who would be able to justify the US$9,995 ($25K in today’s dollars). Apple’s Mac Pro could be viewed as the Lisa’s contemporary and fully speced systems retail for as much as $35,000 meaning top tier Apple hardware still remains out of the hands of most consumers.
Jobs is somewhat (in)famous for his XEROX visit and the subsequent release of LISA OS and the inclusion of a mouse. Of course how everything plays together ultimately determines a computers success and the Lisa was full of great ideas that simply had not matured enough to be reliable.
Lisa running LisaDraw, an early graphics program.
Lisa’s “Twiggy” Fileware drives and disks were an Apple innovation and were exclusively used in the Lisa 1. Twiggy was a reference to the famous model of the 60’s referred to the thinness of the disks. The Twiggy drives were slow and unreliable, resulting in the release of the Lisa 2 just a year later which housed the more common and practical 3.5” disks.
LisaDraw - Packaging was excessive in 83, before online documentation became the norm.
Fileware disks - While they look a lot like common floppy disks, Fileware disks were a proprietary Lisa format and were prone to failure.
The Lisa was an important computer in that it paved the way for a lot of what we take for granted today. It could be seen as the first modern computer sold to the public and was certainly the instrumental in the development of the Macintosh.
If you are anything like me, the idea of owning a Lisa is out of the question but a papercraft version is free and will take up far less space. I would encourage you to give it a try and please check out my other computers to build your very own miniature computer museum.
You can download the Apple Lisa 1 papercraft here.
Please consider sharing this post as it always helps me share these projects with other retro fans!
Lisa