Meanwhile, the Micral-N had been available for more than a whole quarter in France...

No, it's not an american who invented, the personal computer. It his a French enterprise, R2E (André Truong Truong Thi and François Gernelle) who did it in January (first prototype delivered) and in February (first commercial offereing) 1973.

The Queen's University MCM/70 was released duing the APL Users’ Conference in Toronto, on May 15-18, 1973, four months later!

http://www.old-computers.com/museum/computer.asp?c=352

http://www.feb-patrimoine.com/projet/micral/micral.htm

The Kenbak-1 was first available in 1971, and it was invented by Americans:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kenbak-1

http://www.kenbak-1.net/

There's a long list of precursors at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_personal_computers#T... , including the Kenbak-1, which "is considered by the Computer History Museum to be the world's first personal computer."

It was designed in 1970, and first sold in early 1971, so several years before the MCM/70.

Did apple claim to invent it? I think their claim to fame was that they were the first to popularize the PC. The first to build an empire based around the PC.

No, Apple never claimed to invent the personal computer. The Apple ][, along with the TRS-80 and the Commodore PET all came out in the same year (the "1977 Trinity"), so it's not really right to say they were the first to develop a successful commercial personal computer.