Steve WozniakFrom Wikipedia, the free encyclopediaSteve WozniakSteve Wozniak.jpgWozniak on June 10, 2005Born Stephan Gary Wozniak[1]:18August 11, 1950 (age 64)San Jose, California, U.S.Nationality AmericanOther names Berkeley BlueStephen Wozniak[1]:18WozAlma mater University of Colorado, BoulderDe Anza CollegeUniversity of California, BerkeleyOccupation Electronics engineerComputer programmerKnown for Cofounding Apple Inc.Religion None[2]Spouse(s) Alice Robertson (m. 1976–80)Candice Clark (m. 1981–87)Suzanne Mulkern (m. 1990–2004)Janet Hill (m. 2008)Children 3Call-sign ex-WA6BND (ex-WV6VLY)Websitewww.woz.orgStephen (or Stephan) Gary "Steve" Wozniak[1]:18 (born August 11, 1950),[3] known as "Woz", is an American inventor, electronics engineer, and computer programmer who co-founded Apple Computer (now Apple Inc.) with Steve Jobs and Ronald Wayne. Wozniak single-handedly designed both the Apple I and Apple II computers in the late 1970s. These computers contributed significantly to the microcomputer revolution.[4]Contents [hide] 1 Early life and career1.1 Names2 Apple Computer2.1 Origins of Apple2.2 Airplane crash2.3 Final years with Apple3 Post-Apple career4 Patents5 Philanthropy6 Honors and awards6.1 Honorary degrees7 Media7.1 Film7.2 Television8 Personal life9 See also10 References11 External links11.1 VideosEarly life and career[edit]Wozniak was born in San Jose, California, the son of Margaret Elaine (Kern) and Jacob Francis "Jerry" Wozniak. He is of Polish and Swiss-German ancestry on his father's side, and of German, Irish, and English descent on his mother's.[5][6]Names[edit]The name on Wozniak's birth certificate is "Stephan Gary Wozniak", but Steve's mother said that she intended it to be spelled "Stephen", and "Steve" is what he uses.[1]:18Wozniak has been referred to frequently by the nickname "Woz", "The Wonderful Wizard of Woz", or "The Woz";[7] "WoZ" (short for "Wheels of Zeus") is also the name of a company Wozniak founded. In the early 1970s, Wozniak was also known as "Berkeley Blue" in the phone phreak community.[8]Apple Computer[edit]Origins of Apple[edit]In 1971 Wozniak's friend Bill Fernandez introduced Steve Jobs to him. At the time Fernandez and Jobs were attending Homestead High School. Jobs and Wozniak became friends when Jobs worked for the summer at Hewlett-Packard (HP), where Wozniak too was employed, working on a mainframe computer.[9] Also in 1971 Wozniak withdrew from the University of California, Berkeley, only one year after enrolling. This was recounted by Wozniak in a 2007 interview with ABC News, of how and when he first met Steve Jobs: "We first met in 1971 during my college years, while he was in high school. A friend said, 'you should meet Steve Jobs, because he likes electronics and he also plays pranks.' So he introduced us."[10]
In 1973, Jobs was working for arcade game company Atari, Inc. in Los Gatos, California.[11] He was assigned to create a circuit board for the arcade video game Breakout. According to Atari co-founder Nolan Bushnell, Atari offered $100 for each chip that was eliminated in the machine. Jobs had little knowledge of circuit board design and made a deal with Wozniak to split the fee evenly between them if Wozniak could minimize the number of chips. Wozniak reduced the number of chips by 50 by using RAM for the brick representation. Too complex to be fully comprehended at the time, the fact that this prototype also had no scoring or coin mechanisms meant Woz's prototype could not be used. Jobs was paid the full bonus regardless. Jobs told Wozniak that Atari gave them only $700 and that Wozniak's share was thus $350.[12] Wozniak did not learn about the actual bonus until ten years later, but said that if Jobs had told him about it and had said he needed the money, Wozniak would have given it to him.
On June 29, 1975 Wozniak tested his first working prototype, displaying a few letters and running sample programs. It was the first time in history that a character displayed on a TV screen was generated by a home computer.[1] 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 interested in computing. The Club was one of several key centers which established the home hobbyist era, essentially creating the microcomputer industry over the next few decades. Unlike other Homebrew designs, the Apple had an easy-to-achieve video capability that drew a crowd when it was unveiled.[13]
Excerpt from the Apple I design manual, including Wozniak's hand-drawn diagrams
In 1976, Wozniak developed the computer that eventually made him famous. He alone designed the hardware, circuit board designs, and operating system for the Apple I.[13] Jobs had the idea to sell the Apple I 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' Volkswagen van), raised $1,300, and assembled the first boards in Jobs' bedroom and later (when there was no space left) in Jobs' garage. Wozniak's apartment in San Jose was filled with monitors, electronic devices, and some computer games Wozniak had developed. The Apple I sold for $666.66. (Wozniak later said he had no idea about the relation between the number and the mark of the beast, and "I came up with [it] because I like repeating digits.") Jobs and Wozniak sold their first 50 system boards to Paul Terrell, who was starting a new computer shop, called the Byte Shop, in Mountain View, California.[1]
After the success of the Apple I, Wozniak designed the Apple II, the first personal computer that had the ability to display color graphics, and BASIC programming language built-in.[1] Inspired by "the technique Atari used to simulate colors on its first arcade games", Wozniak found a way to putting colors into the NTSC system by using a $1 chip,[14] while colors in the PAL system was achieved by "accident" when a dot occurred on a line, and to this day he has no idea how it works.[15] During the design stage, Steve Jobs argued that the Apple II should have two expansion slots, while Wozniak wanted six. After a heated argument, during which Wozniak had threatened for Jobs to 'go get himself another computer', they decided to go with eight slots. The Apple II became one of the first highly successful mass-produced personal computers.
On April 1, 1976, Jobs and Wozniak formed Apple Computer. Wozniak resigned from his job at Hewlett-Packard and became the vice president in charge of research and development at Apple. Wozniak's Apple I was similar to the Altair 8800, the first commercially available microcomputer, except the Apple I had no provision for internal expansion cards. With expansion cards the Altair could attach to a computer terminal and be programmed in BASIC. In contrast, the Apple I was a hobbyist machine. Wozniak's design included 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. Apple's first computer lacked a case, power supply, keyboard, and display, all components the user had to provide.
Airplane crash[edit]
On February 7, 1981, the Beechcraft Bonanza A36TC Wozniak was piloting crashed soon after takeoff from the Sky Park Airport in Scotts Valley, California.[16] The plane stalled while climbing, then bounced down the runway, went through two fences, and crashed into an embankment. Wozniak and his three passengers, then-fiance Candice Clark, her brother and his girlfriend, were injured. Wozniak sustained severe face and head injuries, including losing a tooth, and also suffered for five weeks after the crash from anterograde amnesia, the inability to create new memories. He had no memory of the crash, and did not remember his name in the hospital or the things he did after he was released from the hospital.[17][18] The National Transportation Safety Board investigation report cited premature liftoff and pilot inexperience as probable causes of the crash.[19] Wozniak did not immediately return after recovering from the airplane crash, seeing it as a good reason to leave.[17]
Final years with Apple[edit]
Steve Wozniak in 1983
In May 1982 and 1983, Wozniak 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.
Also in 1983, Wozniak returned to Apple product development, desiring no more of a role than that of an engineer and a motivational factor for the Apple workforce.[1]
Even with the success he helped create at Apple, Wozniak felt that Apple was a hindrance to become who he wanted to be and that it was "the bane of his existence".[20] He enjoyed engineering, not management, and as other engineers joined the growing company no longer felt needed at Apple and by early 1985, however, Wozniak again left Apple. Stating that the company had "been going in the wrong direction for the last five years", he sold most of his stock.[21] Wozniak permanently ended his full-time employment with Apple on February 6, 1987, 12 years after having created the company.
Post-Apple career[edit]
One thing Wozniak wanted to do was teach elementary school because of the important role teachers play in students' lives. Eventually, he did teach computer classes to children from the fifth through ninth grades and teachers as well.[20]
Wozniak remains an employee of Apple and receives a stipend, estimated to be $120,000 per year.[1][22][23] He is also an Apple shareholder.[24] He also maintained connections with Steve Jobs until Jobs' death in October 2011,[25] although, in 2006, Woz
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