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Wozniak was born in San Jose, California. He was the son of an electrical engineer for Lockheed Missiles and Space Company in Sunnyvale(Silicon Valley 2024), California. -
Wozniak had a gift for mathematics and a interest in electronics. He moved to Boulder, Colorado to go to the University of Colorado for 1 year before dropping out.
Upon returning to California he continued his studies at a local community college then ended up transferring to the University of California in Berkley. -
Wozniak designed something he called a "Blue box" for phreaking (which was a device that was able to hack into phone networks and be able to make long distance calls without paying) He created this with Steve Jobs, they sold them at their school for some money. -
Wozniak formally dropped out of UC Berkley. By that time he was working for many small electronic firms in the SF Bay area before officially getting hired at Hewlett-Packard Company (a company that many people know as HP). -
Wozniak joined the Homebrew Computer Club, a group centered on the Altair 8800 microcomputer DIY kit, which was based on one of the world’s first microprocessors, the Intel Corporation 8080. -
As Wozniak was working as an engineering intern at HP, he designed his own microcomputer using a microprocessor, but the company had no interest in developing his design. Steve Jobs, who was in Wozniak's club, loved Wozniak’s design. They decided to work together to form their own company called Apple Computer. -
All company's have to start some where right? Their initial capital came from selling Jobs’s automobile and Wozniak’s programmable calculator. Later on they set up production in Jobs family's garage to build microcomputer circuit boards. They wanted to try their hand at selling these creations. Sales of the kit ended up being looking good, so they decided to produce a finished product, calling it the Apple II. The new model included a built-in keyboard and support for a color monitor. -
The Apple II, a combination of Wozniak’s advanced engineering with Jobs’s aesthetic sense, it quickly became the first personal computer to appeal beyond hobbyist circles. The company's market value exceeded $1 billion, at the time it was the fastest rise to that milestone in corporate history. Wozniak’s stock in the company made him an instant multimillionaire. -
Wozniak was working on new hardware components, such as the 3.5-inch floppy disk drive for the Apple II, and all kinds of components of the Apple operating system and its software applications. This unfortunately came to an end when he crashed his small airplane, leaving him with temporary traumatic amnesia (inability to form new long-term memories). Wozniak was forced to go on a leave. -
Wozniak officially returned to Apple in 1982, though he resisted efforts to involve him in management. In 1985 he retired as an active employee, immediately after being awarded, a National Medal of Technology by U.S. Pres. Ronald Reagan. Wozniak spent the following years engaged in philanthropic causes, especially involving the education of children, and in volunteer work teaching computer enrichment classes to preteens. -
After his crash he ended up returning to Berkeley, to finish the computer science and electrical engineering courses needed to earn those degrees. But then he dropped out again, he was eventually given credit for his work at Apple, and the school awarded him a bachelor of science degree in electrical engineering. -
Wozniak published his autobiography, "iWoz: Computer Geek to Cult Icon: How I Invented the Personal Computer, Co-Founded Apple, and Had Fun Doing It." Although Wozniak was semiretired after leaving Apple, he did his best to keep up with the computing world by funding various business's and occasionally serving as an adviser or board member for different companies. -
Wozniak became the chief scientist at Fusion-Io (American company that produces high-capacity, solid-state storage devices). He was serving on the company’s board of directors then became a full-time employee. -
After Fusion-Io was sold to SanDisk in 2014, shortly after Wozniak left the company to become chief scientist at Primary Data, which was involved in data virtualization. That business ended up shutting down in 2018. -
Wozniak cofounded Efforce, a company that allows companies to fund energy efficiency projects through investing in a cryptocurrency token using blockchain technology.