Steve Wozniak’s passion for electronics stemmed from his father’s career as an engineer at Lockheed Martin.
Woz built his first computer when he was 13 and took top prizes in a science fair. At 19 he met 14-year-old Steve jobs and the two built an electronic “blue box” enabling them to make free phone calls by seizing phone-company lines.
By 1975, Woz dropped out of the University of California, Berkeley and came up with a computer that eventually became successful nationwide.
Woz’s computer, named Apple I, was a fully assembled and functional unit that contained a $25 microprocessor on a single-circuit board with ROM.
On April 1 1976, Wozniak and Steve Jobs founded Apple Computer Inc. with Wozniak’s Apple I personal computer. Wozniak quit his job at Hewlett-Packard and became the vice president in charge of research and development at Apple.
The following year, he introduced his Apple II personal computer, featuring a central processing unit, a keyboard, color graphics, and a floppy disk drive.
The company enjoyed much success during the past decade with its stock price hitting a high of $200 in 2007. Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak and together with Ronald Wayne, they donned the generation of affordable personal computers and was the first step in the advancement of the major corporation known today as Apple Inc.
In 1981, Wozniak went back to UC Berkeley and finished his degree in electrical engineering/computer science. For his achievements at Apple, Wozniak was awarded the National Medal of Technology by the President of the United States in 1985, the highest honor bestowed on America’s leading innovators.
Steve Wozniak: Technology entrepreneur
