Apple Inc. has turned 40 years old after being co-founded by Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, and Ronald Wayne on April 1, 1976. During the past four decades the tech giant went from almost going bankrupt to becoming the world's most valuable company. Key products in the company's history include the Apple II and Macintosh desktops, iPod media player, iPhone smartphone, and iPad tablet.

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In 1976 Jobs and Wozniak tested the Apple I computer in the future CEO's childhood home in Los Altos, California. The 50 units were sold by The Byte Shop for $666.66.  

Then during the next year Apple launched the Apple II desktop computer that became the company's first commercially successful product. Multi-millionaire Mike Markkula invested $92,000 in the startup company and Michael Scott became the first Apple CEO.

The California company's next big product was the Macintosh that was launched in 1984. It was introduced with the famous "1984 commercial" during Super Bowl 18 and referred to Big Brother in George Orwell's novel "1984," according to Mac Rumors. The computer was praised for innovations include a computer mouse and pull-down menus.

Jobs resigned from Apple in September 1985 after battling with the company's Board of Directors. He founded NeXT Computer with some ex-Apple employees.

After Apple had financial problems in part due to the success of Microsoft Windows Jobs returned to Apple to become the temporary CEO. During the next year Apple announced the new iMac desktop computer and iPod portable media player in 2001.

  Since then Apple has launched several new innovations. They include the iTunes Store, iPhone, Apple TV, App Store, iPad, Apple Watch, Apple Pay, and Apple Music.

Co-founder Jobs passed away in October 2011 after a battle with pancreatic cancer and other health issues. It was one day after the company unveiled the iPhone 4S and Siri.      

While Jobs and Wozniak have become household names in Apple history few people know about Wayne. He was an Atari employee when he met Jobs.

 Wayne helped talk Wozniak into becoming an Apple executive. 41-year-old Wayne then typed up the paperwork to register the Apple Computer Company, and received a 10 percent stake in the company.

However, about two weeks later Wayne removed his name from the business contract. His share of the Apple pie would be worth $60 billion today but Wayne still believes he had good reasons to pull out of the contract, according to BBC.

Here's the 1984 Macintosh commercial: