Steve Wozniak

Steve Wozniak, Stephen Gary Wozniak actually (nicknamed (The) Woz or, more rarely, Wizard of Woz; born August 11, 1950 in Sunnyvale, California ) is an American computer engineer and entrepreneur. He founded in 1976 together with his childhood friend Steve Jobs and Ronald Wayne, the company Apple and was so instrumental in the advent of PCs in households. His creations include the Apple I and the Apple II the last home computer, which was designed completely by a single developer. He also invented the computer game Breakout. Wozniak applies for its outstanding creative technical skills and his attitude to life as a typical embodiment of the brilliant computer hacker. Often the contrast is emphasized to his companions Jobs, who was success-oriented rather than and with whom he had a falling out several times.

The early years and the inspiration

Wozniak has Polish and German ancestors. He is the son of Margaret Elaine (core) and Jacob Francis "Jerry" Wozniak. His father, Jerry worked as an engineer at Lockheed. Frequently he supported his son in his inventions and examined them. Influence also had Tom Swift, the hero of a series of adventure novels. Wozniak saw him as the product of creative freedom, scientific knowledge and the ability to find a solution for every problem.

In his intellectual development dealing with ethical and moral issues and philosophy played an important role, also the maxim of the radio amateur ethics to help people in need, as well as the dominant one in the Tom Swift books utilitarian and humanitarian setting. Later, it was also characterized by the political debates surrounding the Vietnam War.

From his father he learned the basics of mathematics and electronics. When Wozniak was eleven years old, he built his own amateur radio station and was an amateur radio license with the call sign WA6BND. He was elected president of the electronics club at Homestead High School in Cupertino, California.

1963, at the age of 13, he won first prize in a science fair for one built by him transistor -based calculator. At the same age he began to design his first computer, which he paved the way for his later successes. With one of these computers could play Tic Tac Toe. Since he did not have sufficient financial resources and many parts could not afford, he began existing computer with as few microchips to redesign, to make them affordable. But he was too shy to ask for chip companies after microchips in order to realize his computer.

Study

During his studies, he devoted his spare time to build a TV jammer, with whom he played his classmates various pranks. At the age of 19 years he developed together with his friend Bill Fernandez and the support of the manager Bill Werner, who provided him with the chips, the Cream Soda Computer. When the computer was completed, Wozniak's mother alerted the press, but when the reporter arrived, this tripped over a cable, and the entire computer went up in smoke. The article appeared yet. This computer was a milestone for Wozniak dar. The computer was a hand at the level of the kits available and on the other hand, he more or less built alone.

In addition, the Cream Soda Computer was one reason for getting to know Steve Jobs. When the computer was completed, Bill Fernandez prompted a meeting between the two since both interested in electronics. They met with Bill, came directly from computer to talking and became good friends.

Phreaking

In an issue of Esquire Wozniak discovered a story about a blue box, with which it was possible to make free phone calls. For this purpose it was necessary to call a toll-free number, "take over" by a special tone and select the line by tones. He met with John T. Draper aka Cap'n Crunch, the discoverer of this phreaking method, and could be explained by the technical background. Together with Steve Jobs, he began self-built Blue Boxes for Sale. For Wozniak but not the free phone calls were in the foreground, but that he could exploit a flaw in the system - which can be considered as a typical setting of a hacker. The proliferation of the Blue Box and replicas prompted the American telephone company AT & T finally to change the technology of its telephone network nationwide.

Hewlett -Packard

After Steve Wozniak in June 1972 left Berkeley, he joined the small company Electro glass to work. After half a year, in January 1973, he joined as an engineer at HP. Here he met his friend Allen tree again, which completed an internship there. Tree Wozniak reported on the work in his group designed the calculator HP -35. After posting in this group Wozniak was working on what he had always wanted. The HP -35 was the world's first technical-scientific calculator with trigonometric, logarithmic and Exponentialrechnungs functions.

His passion, however, was still the development of computers. In his spare time he casually sophisticated video games. When he, who now worked for Steve Jobs at Atari, where he attended and those in attendance presented his development, Atari offered him directly to a job. Wozniak, however, declined because he still felt comfortable at Hewlett -Packard.

The development of Breakout

A few months later he received a call from Jobs, who told him that Atari would develop a similar game like Pong and Wozniak should help; the entire project, however, had to be completed in four days. So Wozniak invented the game Breakout. For this work, Steve Jobs received $ 5,000. His friend Wozniak, who had programmed the actual game in only four days, he said that he only got $ 700, and gave him $ 350.

The Homebrew Computer Club

In March 1975 Wozniak visited for the first time a meeting of leisure engineers, the Homebrew Computer Club. The aim of the club was to make the computer technology available to everyone. After his first visit Wozniak began to develop a computer. That same night he had finished the draft on paper. However, it took much longer to obtain and understand their data leaves the parts. Landmark of the computer was the Altair 8800th When he had completed the computer, he initially did not dare to present the computer. This developed by a single person computer was a masterpiece of engineering for its time. The ease of use was superior to the competition. He was the first home computer with a typewriter keyboard. The competition, such as the Altair, which was introduced in early 1975, had to be painstakingly controlled via a toggle switch. The Altair had no monitor, no keyboard and no real memory on delivery. The Apple I was a fully assembled motherboard, optionally together with keyboard already installed in a housing made of wood available, with a 1- MHz processor on a motherboard with 4 kB of RAM. As a storage medium, a small interface a commercially available cassette recorder allowed to connect, so that programs did not have to be re- typed after each start.

The founding of Apple Computer

On April 1, 1976 Jobs and Wozniak founded Apple Computer Company. For the start-up capital Wozniak sold his programmable calculator Hewlett -Packard HP -65 and Jobs his VW Bulli. For both, together they were given $ 1,300. The first Apple I soldered them together in Jobs' garage. Through his work at Apple now has more than he earned at his job at HP. However, he initially wanted rather stay with HP. He was not moved as desired in the department to develop a computer. This and constant attempts by Steve Jobs finally convinced him to leave his job at HP and be responsible at Apple for research and development. The Apple I cost $ 666.66 ( this corresponds approximately to a present value of $ 2,500 ). The first 50 computers were sold to the Byte Shop, a local computer dealer. Overall, a few hundred copies were sold, which were soldered together by Steve Wozniak.

Wozniak could concentrate on troubleshooting the Apple I and the addition of new functions to full-time. With the profit from the sale of the Apple II was developed. This new computer should be easy to use and inexpensive to manufacture. This was achieved through the use of simple logic of mass-produced chips instead of expensive special chips and Wozniak's potential to save a lot of chips.

The Apple II could represent colors and graphics, also he was with his eight-slot easily expandable and versatile. 1978 Wozniak designed the entire electronics for a floppy drive ( the mechanics was externally purchased ). Along with Randy Wigginton wrote the operating system Apple DOS.

In addition to the hardware design Wozniak wrote most of the software that ran on the early Apple computers. He wrote a BASIC interpreter for the 6502, before he even real got such a processor in the hands, the game Breakout ( that was one reason to install audio output and a second, low resolution, but faster graphics mode with the computer ), the code that was needed to control the floppy drive, and much more. His highly individualistic style of programming provided for unusually fast and space- saving programs, but at the same time made ​​the maintenance by other programmers almost impossible.

On the software side of the Apple II became more attractive for business people, as Dan Bricklin and Bob Frankston developed VisiCalc spreadsheet software. From about 1980, Apple had become a world famous brand and made Jobs and Wozniak millionaires. 1982 Apple was already represented in the Fortune 500.

The departure of Apple and beyond

For years, the Apple II was the main source of revenue for Apple and ensured the survival of the company as they only narrowly escaped through the flops of the Apple III and the short-lived Lisa bankruptcy. Through the reliable profits it was possible to develop the Macintosh and marketable. The Macintosh has a great importance among the Apple products to this day.

On February 7, 1981, Steve Wozniak crashed on takeoff from Santa Cruz Sky Park from a Beechcraft Bonanza. The investigation revealed that his license was not enough to fly an aircraft of this type. As a result of the plane crash he suffered at times to anterograde amnesia. He was cast in many respects from the web by the accident. He tortured himself with questions about the meaning and purpose of his life and was burnt. He married and went under the name "Rocky ( Raccoon ) Clark " The University of California, Berkeley back to finally catch his degree in 1982. The wrong name should keep him a certain peace and anonymity, as his real name had become well known. In 1983 he decided to return to the main development department of Apple, but he wanted to be just a simple engineer and a motivational factor for the Apple workforce.

1982 and 1983 he sponsored twice the " U.S. Festival ", which celebrated the development of technologies and the connections between the music, the computer, the television and the people. Financially, the festivals were failures, but they made important formative events of the new electronically - creative class is, by bringing together leading computer games developer, computer - film trick technician, electronic musician, innovative television people and many others, until then individually rather working end.

Steve Wozniak withdrew on February 6, 1985 in part of Apple back, but is an employee with a fixed income until today. He wanted to spend more time in a smaller company and founded nine years after the emergence of Apple the company CL 9 The originally planned name Cloud 9 was already taken, so he chose this shortcut. The company focused on the development of universal remote controls. The housing should be designed by the German company frogdesign, which was also responsible for the design of the Apple IIc housing. When Steve Jobs got a prototype to face, he smashed him and threatened frogdesign with the cancellation of all current and future orders from Apple if they would continue to cooperate with Wozniak.

Later, Steve Wozniak discovered his passion for teaching. He taught, for example, fifth graders, and pursued charitable activities in the field of education. He also hosted Unuson ( Unite Us In Song), which was founded in the U.S. Festival sponsored by him.

In 2001 he founded Wheels Of Zeus, a company that manufactures wireless and GPS-based products. In the same year he came to the Supervisory Board of Danger, Inc., the makers of Hiptop (aka Sidekick T-Mobile ).

Since August 2009, Steve Wozniak as " chief scientist " for the American company Fusion-io operate.

Honors

Steve Wozniak was awarded the 1985 National Medal of Technology by the President of the United States. In 1987, he was a sponsor of the first U.S. / USSR - rock concert in Moscow. In 1979 he received the Grace Murray Hopper Award. In 1990, Wozniak with others, the Tech Museum, Silicon Valley Ballet and the " Children's Discovery Museum " in San Jose (California ) and supported other local projects. In the same year he was a sponsor of computers for schools in the USSR, and he is co-founder of the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

Since 1980, Wozniak is a member of the Federation of the Freemasons, his box Charity Lodge No.. 362 is located in Campbell ( California).

In September 2000, he was inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame.

In May 2004, Wozniak was nominated by Tom Miller for an honorary doctorate of science at North Carolina State University for his services to the home computer. On 10 and 11 June 2004, he participated in the HOPE conference in New York, where he spoke on Saturday in a two-hour lecture on his life and the technology and on Sunday along with Richard Cheshire and Sam Nitzberg about retro computing.

In the published in November 2005 PC computer game Civilization 4, it is with the saying: " Never trust a computer can that you do not throw out the window " quotes. We Also just this happens in the game in the invention of the computer.

Steve Wozniak made ​​an appearance in the second episode of the fourth season of "The Big Bang Theory ".

6 May 2011 Wozniak was awarded an honorary doctorate from Michigan State University.

Movies and Books

• The Early Years of Apple and Steve Wozniak are set in the movie Pirates of Silicon Valley in the scene. Wozniak is embodied therein by Joey Slotnick. The film is based on the book Fire in the Valley: The Making of the Personal Computer by Paul Freiberger and Michael Swaine (ISBN 0-07-135895-1 ).
• Was published in 2006 under the title iWoz - Computer Geek to Cult Icon: How I invented the personal computer, co-founded Apple, and had fun doing it ( German edition 2007: iWoz - How I Invented the Personal Computer and Apple co-founded, Hanser Verlag, ISBN 3-446-40406-6 ), the autobiography of Steve Wozniak, which he co-wrote with author Gina Smith.
• Published in 2007 the audiobook edition of iWoz ( read by Ari Gosch, nine CDs and MP3 CD, Audiobook Radioropa, ISBN 978-3-86667-738-8 )
• 2013 Jobs ( film ): Wozniak is here played by Josh Gad.