Read this 1976 letter from a Silicon Valley exec that calls Steve Jobs 'flaky' and a 'joker'

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The letter, which is preserved in the Department of Special Collections at Stanford University, starts off: "Bob - This joker (attached) is going to be calling you," Rose wrote of Jobs.

"Somebody at Regis McKenna recommended us (you). They are 2 guys — they build kits —operate out of a garage — want our catalog sheets. Wants it for nothing. Wouldn't trust me. Told him we'd like to see what they've got — we'd estimate — then decide. Sounds flaky. Watch it!"

"In the '70s, the notion of going off and trying to do your own thing was still very new," Berlin explains. "Entrepreneurs were basically the washouts who couldn't make it in a real, decent company. "

Jobs and Wozniak officially launched Apple Computer on April Fool's Day, 1976, only a few months before Rose wrote the letter. The first Apple 1 computers were made in Jobs' parents' garage and sold for $666.66.

"The Apple 1 was a relatively bare-bones product by today's standards," the Wall Street Journal reports. "It consisted only of a motherboard; no case was included, and buyers were expected to provide their own keyboard and monitor. Installing the BASIC programming language required a cassette recorder and a special card."

Rose's 1976 notes also include information on the Apple 1's schematics.

While only about 200 Apple 1s were created, the company went on to revolutionize personal computing in coming decades and introduce technologies like the iPhone. Today, the company's market cap is over $916 billion.

The letters were donated to Stanford by Rose in 1998.

Source: Make It, CNBC.com