Michael Steil has produced what he calls “the first confirmed perfect dump of the 4096 bytes” that constituted the BASIC that shipped with the original Apple-1 computer. This software was recovered after Steil received a copy — in MP3 format. From his blog:
The Apple I is extremely rare. Only 200 were built, and less than 100 are believed to be in existence … The cassettes are even rarer, as not every Apple I came with one. There has not been a dump of the tape until 2002, when Achim Breidenbach of Boinx Software got an MP3 recording of an original Apple 1 BASIC tape … [and] managed to decode it by writing a program — in GFA BASIC on an Atari ST.
Hat tips to TUAW and 9 to 5 Mac.