Franklin's bad ads for Apple II clones and the beloved impersonator they depict

Franklin's bad ads for Apple ][ clones and the beloved impersonator they relied on

A beloved hometown impersonator had no idea what he was signing up for with this photoshoot.

It’s not that bad of an ad at first glance. The concept and execution pass the cavemen test: you immediately know what’s for sale and why it’s worth the money. It’s eye-catching and memorable. But Franklin Computer Corporation’s hardware, software, and ad concepts were stolen intellectual property, which, I think, qualifies as “bad.”

Franklin was focused on cloning Apple products and selling them for less, from day one. Their first computer was the ACE 100, an acronym for Apple Compatible Equipment.

A software engineer at Franklin from 1982 to 1984 who helped build these Clones, ironically named Bob Applegate, recalls that the ACE 100 was “a very close copy of the Apple ][, but the motherboard was larger and it had an off-the-shelf case. They were in a hurry to get systems to market and the wait for a custom formed case was many months.” They needed attention and they needed it quickly in order to survive an especially competitive time in desktop computer manufacturing.

First, the company generated buzz by hiring models wearing swimsuits to hand out ACE 100 brochures at Applefest 1982 in Boston, a stunt that Applegate says got the cops called on Franklin and turned into even more spotlight.

Things were looking so good, so early, that Franklin’s founders and funders received special editions of the ACE 100 with their names etched on a front-facing gold plate before the model was unceremoniously ditched for the next one, which came out just a few months after its predecessor.

Given enough time every advertiser of computers in the 80s eventually put an actor playing a founding father in one of their campaigns. For Franklin Computers the decision feels especially problematic, though.

One of Apple’s most famous ads shows Benjamin Franklin designing his kite experiment on an Apple ][, two years before the copycat ACE 1000 was released. Was that ad the inspiration behind Franklin’s name and mascot? I couldn’t find any evidence of that but it feels too coincidental to ignore.

What I did find, however, is anecdotal evidence that the impersonator in Franklin Computer’s was none other than Ralph Archbold. The official Benjamin Franklin for the city of Philadelphia, Archbold has a storied resume. His face was plastered all over the city, which just so happens to sit directly across the Delaware River from Pennsauken, New Jersey – Franklin Computer’s headquarters.

Franklin Computers leaned so heavily on the Benjamin Franklin motif that the ACE’s user manuals claimed “The cartoon character of Ben Franklin appearing throughout this publication constitutes a trademark of Franklin Computer Corporation.” A claim that feels especially hypocritical considering just how far their copyright infringement on Apple went.

Apparently, when Steve Wozniak first got his hands on an ACE 1000-series machine, “he felt that Franklin had even copied the circuit-board layout, right down to how the chips were arranged.” Reviewers were even able to pull cards out of an Apple ][ motherboard, plug them into an ACE machine, and they’d work without any other modifications. One retro hardware forum had a comment claiming “they outright stole the Apple BIOS code, including -- bad move -- the copyright notice, itself.”

But there were a handful of minor differences. Apple’s computer could not type in lower-case at the time, while Franklin’s clone could. The ACE 1000 also had a built-in power supply and 64k of RAM while Apple’s machine did not.

All of this and Franklin’s hardware was cheaper. ACE 1000-series computers were hugely popular and Franklin employed 450 people to pump out nearly 100,000 machines in 1983 (compared to Apple’s ~650,000). Apple eventually sued and won an appeal in late 1983.

Poor Ralph Archbold continued to be associated with Franklin’s tarnished name and product, likely photographed in a single, pre-lawsuit session that stretched into a year’s worth of ads down the road. Controversy aside, people seemed to adore Franklin’s ACE machines, especially for their longevity.

Franklin Computer limped on with a few more Apple-compatible (but not cloned) computers. By 1988 they had abandoned desktop computers entirely and switched to a line of handheld electronics that were absolutely everywhere during the 90s, including handheld Bible devices and MP3 players.