Origins of AppleIn 1970, Wozniak became friends with Steve Jobs, when Jobs worked for the summer at a company where Wozniak was working on a mainframe computer.[2] According to Wozniak's autobiography, iWoz, Jobs had the idea to sell the computer as a fully assembled printed circuit board. Wozniak, at first skeptical, was later convinced by Jobs that even if they were not successful they could at least say to their grandkids they had had their own company. Together they sold some of their possessions (such as Wozniak's HP scientific calculator and Jobs's Volkswagen van), raised USD $1,300, and assembled the first prototypes in Jobs's bedroom and later (when there was no space left) in Jobs's garage. Wozniak's apartment in San Jose was filled with monitors, electronic devices, and some computer games Wozniak had developed, similar to SuperPong but with voice overs to the blips on the screen.
By 1975, Wozniak withdrew from the University of California, Berkeley and developed the computer that eventually made him famous. By himself he designed the hardware, circuit board designs, and operating system for the Apple I.[3] With the Apple I design, he and Jobs were largely working to impress other members of the Palo Alto-based Homebrew Computer Club, a local group of electronics hobbyists very interested in computing, one of several key centers which established the home hobbyist era, essentially creating the microcomputer industry over several years. Unlike other Home Brew competitors, the Apple had an easy-to-achieve video capability that immediately created buzz and drew a crowd when it was unveiled.[3]
On April 1, 1976, Jobs and Wozniak formed Apple Computer. Wozniak quit his job at Hewlett-Packard and became the vice president in charge of research and development at Apple. Their first product, the Apple I computer, was similar to the Altair 8800, the first commercially available microcomputer, except it had no provision for internal expansion cards. With the addition of these cards, the Altair could be attached to a computer terminal and could be programmed in BASIC. The Apple I was purely a hobbyist machine, a $25 microprocessor (MOS 6502) on a single-circuit board with 256 bytes of ROM, 4K or 8K bytes of RAM and a 40-character by 24-row display controller. It lacked a case, power supply, keyboard, or display, which had to be provided by the user. The Apple I was priced at $666. (Wozniak later said he had no idea about the correlation between the number and the mark of the beast, and "I came up with [it] because I like repeating digits." It was $500 plus a 1/3 markup, which is actually $666.67, rounding up to the nearest penny.) Jobs and Wozniak sold their first fifty system boards to Paul Terrell, who was starting a new computer shop, called the Byte Shop, in Mountain View, California.[4]
Excerpt from the Apple I design manual, including Wozniak's hand-drawn diagramsAirplane crashIn February 1981, Wozniak was involved in a private plane accident while taking off from a Scott Valley Airport.[5] The cause of the crash was determined to be a premature liftoff. He was unable to recall any of the events of the crash and for many weeks after being released from the hospital, didn't realize he had been in a crash at all. He says he wandered around in a haze and didn't report to work, thinking every day was a weekend day. He didn't remember one day to the next and needed to be told how to get to places familiar to him. He finally began to figure out what happened, after which his memory began operating correctly again.
Employment with AppleWozniak did not immediately return to Apple after having recovered from the crash. Instead, he married Candice Clark and returned to UC Berkeley under the name "Rocky Raccoon Clark" (Rocky was his dog's name and Clark his wife's maiden name), finally earning his undergraduate degree in 1986.[6] In May 1982 and 1983, Wozniak also sponsored two US Festivals to celebrate evolving technologies; they ended up as a technology exposition and a rock festival as a combination of music, computers, television and people.
In 1983 he returned to Apple product development, desiring no more of a role than that of an engineer and a motivational factor for the Apple workforce.[4]
Wozniak permanently ended his full-time employment with Apple on February 6, 1987, 12 years after having created the company. He still remains an employee (and receives a paycheck)[4][7] and is a shareholder.[8] He also maintained connections with Steve Jobs until Jobs's death in October 2011,[citation needed] although in 2006 Wozniak stated that he and Jobs were not close friends.[9]
Post-Apple careerWozniak founded a new venture called CL 9, which developed and brought the first programmable universal remote control to market in 1987.[4] Wozniak also taught fifth-grade students.
In 2001, Wozniak co-founded Wheels of Zeus (WoZ), to create wireless GPS technology to "help everyday people find everyday things." In 2002, he joined the Board of Directors of Ripcord Networks, Inc., joining Ellen Hancock, Gil Amelio, Mike Connor, and Wheels of Zeus co-founder Alex Fielding, all Apple alumni, in a new telecommunications venture. Later the same year he joined the Board of Directors of Danger, Inc., the maker of the Hip Top (a.k.a. Side Kick from T-Mobile).
Joey Slotnick, left, poses with Steve Wozniak. Slotnick portrayed Wozniak in the film Pirates of Silicon Valley.In 2006, Wheels of Zeus was closed, and Wozniak founded Acquicor Technology, a holding company for acquiring technology companies and developing them, with Apple alumni Ellen Hancock and Gil Amelio.
In September 2006, Wozniak published his autobiography, iWoz: From Computer Geek to Cult Icon: How I Invented the Personal Computer, Co-Founded Apple, and Had Fun Doing It. It was co-authored by writer Gina Smith.
In March 2006, Wozniak attended the FIRST National Competition in Atlanta to show off Lego robots.[10] In 2010, he attended another FIRST event, a regional event in downtown Phoenix Arizona at the Arizona State Fairgrounds.
In February 2009, Steve Wozniak joined Fusion-io, a data storage and server company, in Salt Lake City, Utah as their chief scientist.[11]
On November 18, 2010, Steve Wozniak gave a speech at the Science & Technology Summit at the World Forum Convention Center in The Hague in which he predicted that Android would be dominant over the iPhone market-wise but the iPhone would retain the quality edge.[12]
On June 9, 2011, Wozniak joined members of Fusion-io’s management team to celebrate the company’s first day of trading on the NYSE by ringing The Opening Bell.[13]
On Thursday 20th October 2011, Wozniak will deliver a keynote presentation entitled "Today’s Science Fiction, Tomorrow’s Science Fact" at IP EXPO a Computer expo which takes place at Earls Court Exhibition Centre in London.[14]
PhilanthropySince leaving Apple, Wozniak has provided all the money, as well as a good amount of on-site technical support, for the technology program in his local school district.[4] Un.U.Son. (Unite Us In Song), an organization Wozniak formed to organize the two US Festivals, is now primarily tasked with supporting his educational and philanthropic projects.[4] In 1986, Wozniak lent his name to the Stephen G. Wozniak Achievement Awards (referred to as Wozzie Awards), which he presented to six Bay Area high school and college students for their innovative use of computers in the fields of business, art and music.
Honors and awardsWozniak received the National Medal of Technology in 1985 (with Steve Jobs) from US President Ronald Reagan.[4] In December 1989, he received an honorary Doctor of Engineering degree from the University of Colorado at Boulder, where he studied in the late sixties.[15] Later he donated funds to create the "Woz Lab" at the University of Colorado at Boulder. In 1997, he was named a Fellow of the Computer History Museum. Wozniak was a key contributor and benefactor to the Children's Discovery Museum of San Jose; the street in front of the museum has been renamed Woz Way in his honor.[16]
In September 2000, Wozniak was inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame,[17] and in 2001 he was awarded the 7th Annual Heinz Award for Technology, the Economy and Employment.[18] The American Humanist Association awarded him the Isaac Asimov Science Award in 2011.
In December 2005, Wozniak was awarded an honorary Doctor of Engineering degree from Kettering University.[19] He also received an honorary degrees from North Carolina State University and Nova Southeastern University, and the Telluride Tech Festival Award of Technology. In May 2011, Wozniak received an honorary Doctor of Engineering degree from Michigan State University.[20]
On June 22, 2011, he was awarded an honorary degree at Concordia University in Montreal, Canada.
PatentsWozniak is listed as the sole inventor on the following patents:
US Patent No. 4,136,359 - "Microcomputer for use with video display"[21] - for which he was inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame.
US Patent No. 4,210,959 - "Controller for magnetic disc, recorder, or the like"[22]
US Patent No. 4,217,604 - "Apparatus for digitally controlling PAL color display"[23]
US Patent No. 4,278,972 - "Digitally-controlled color signal generation means for use with display"[24]
Television appearancesAfter seeing her stand-up performance in Saratoga, California, Wozniak began dating comedian Kathy Griffin.[25] Together, they attended the 2007 Emmy Awards,[26] and he subsequently made many appearances on the fourth season of her show Kathy Griffin: My Life on the D-List. Woz is on the show as her date for the Producers Guild of America award show. However, on a June 19, 2008 appearance on The Howard Stern Show, Griffin confirmed that they were no longer dating and decided to remain friends.[27]
Wozniak portrays a parody of himself in the first episode of the television series Code Monkeys; he plays the owner of Gameavision before selling it to help fund Apple. He later appears again in the twelfth episode when he is in Las Vegas at the annual Video Game Convention and sees Dave and Jerry. He also appears in a parody of the "Get a Mac" ads featured in the final episode of Code Monkeys' second season. Wozniak is also interviewed and featured in the documentary Hackers Wanted and on BBC.
Wozniak competed on Season 8 of Dancing with the Stars in 2009[28][29] where he danced with Karina Smirnoff. Despite Wozniak and Smirnoff receiving 10 combined points from the three judges out of 30, the lowest score of the evening, he remained in the competition. He later posted on a social networking site that he felt that the vote count was not legitimate and suggested that the Dancing with the Stars judges had lied about the vote count to keep him on the show.[30] After being briefed on the method of judging and vote counting, he retracted and apologized for his statements.[31] Despite suffering a pulled hamstring and a fracture in his foot, Wozniak continued to compete,[32] but was eliminated from the competition on March 31, with a score of 12 out of 30 for an Argentine Tango.[33]
On September 30, 2010 he appeared as himself on The Big Bang Theory dining in The Cheesecake Factory where Penny works and is approached by a robot Sheldon. Leonard tries to explain to Penny who Steve is, but she says she knows him from Dancing with the Stars.
Steve Wozniak signs a Modbook for a fan during an appearance at the Axiotron booth during Macworld Expo 2009.Personal lifeWozniak lives in Los Gatos, California. He is a member of a Segway Polo team, the Silicon Valley Aftershocks. In 2006, they were challenged to a game by the newly formed New Zealand Pole Blacks (the Woz Challenge Cup); the match ended in a 2-2 tie, with the Woz Challenge Cup staying in Auckland. In 2007, the Silicon Valley Aftershocks avenged the tie by defeating the Pole Blacks 5-0 in the Woz Challenge Cup finals. The 2008 Woz Challenge Cup was held at the SegwayFesT 2008 in Indianapolis, Indiana from 8–10 August 2008 (polo events ran 7–9 August 2008).[34]
His favorite video game is Tetris.[35] In the 1990s he submitted so many high scores for the game to Nintendo Power that they would no longer print his scores, so he started sending them in under the alphabetically reversed "Evets Kainzow".[36]
He is also a sworn member of the Freemasons. Wozniak describes his impetus for joining the Freemasons as being able to spend more time with his wife at the time, Alice. Alice belonged to the Order of the Eastern Star, associated with the Masons. He has said that although he took the necessary oaths and is a lifetime Freemason, he doesn't actually put a whole lot of stock in the mystical and religious overtones of the oath or the order. He has remarked that he joined the Freemasons for one specific purpose, but he is very unlike the other members of the order. Wozniak has said that he quickly rose to a third degree Freemason because, whatever he does, he tries to do well. He was initiated in 1980 at Charity Lodge No. 362 in Campbell, California.[37]
He is married to Janet Hill.[38] According to his ex-girlfriend Kathy Griffin, “He met someone very quickly and then they [got] engaged. I have had dinner with them, and she’s a thousand times more appropriate!”[39]
See alsoBlue box
iWoz - an autobiography
Pirates of Silicon Valley - A movie based on the rise of Apple and Microsoft; Wozniak is portrayed by actor Joey Slotnick.
Triumph of the Nerds - A documentary about the rise of the PC industry by Robert X. Cringely.
Nixie tube
Breakout
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