Steve Wozniak

His birth certificate reads Stephan, which his mother says was a clerical accident. His father engineered for Lockheed. He came out of Homestead High in Cupertino in 1968, went through De Anza, and transferred to Berkeley in 1971, and that June he and his friend Bill Fernandez built a computer out of 20 donated logic chips and punch cards and named it Cream Soda after what they were drinking. A newspaper reporter came to see it, stepped on the power cable and blew it up. Fernandez then introduced him to a younger Homestead student named Steve Jobs. The blue box he designed soon afterward, which took a long-distance line for nothing, earned him the phreaking handle Berkeley Blue. Jobs sold about 200 of them at 150 dollars apiece.

He offered the Apple I design to Hewlett-Packard, where he worked designing calculators, and was refused five times. Jobs told him to sell bare circuit boards instead, and they raised the money by selling Wozniak's HP calculator and Jobs's Volkswagen bus. He finished the basic design on March 1, 1976, having done the hardware, the board layout and the operating system by himself, and the company was formed on April 1 with Jobs and a third partner, Ronald Wayne, who did not stay. The Apple II followed in 1977 with color graphics and BASIC built in, and eight expansion slots, because he refused Jobs's two. He designed the Disk II drive in 1978. By early 1985 Apple II products were still about 85 percent of the company's sales.

On February 7, 1981 he took a Beechcraft Bonanza off from Scotts Valley, which he was not qualified to fly. It stalled while climbing, bounced down the runway, went through two fences and hit an embankment. He lost a tooth, took severe head and face injuries, and for five weeks could not lay down new memories — he did not know his own name in the hospital, and later said Apple II games were what brought it back. He never came back to the company the same way. The older injury was smaller and lasted longer: in 1973 Atari paid 100 dollars for every chip cut out of the Breakout board, Wozniak cut 50, and Jobs, who brought him the job, took the 5,000-dollar bonus and told him it was 700. He learned the real figure 10 years later.

He went back to Berkeley in 1981 under the name Rocky Raccoon Clark, which is what the diploma says, and took the degree in 1987. He staged the US Festivals in 1982 and 1983 and lost millions. When Apple went public in 1980 he sold 10 million dollars of his own stock to early employees, which Jobs would not do. He left in 1985, founded CL 9, shipped the first programmable universal remote in 1987, and has been a ceremonial Apple employee ever since. Reagan gave him and Jobs the National Medal of Technology in 1985. He has face blindness. A minor stroke put him in a Mexico City hospital in November 2023. He was back on stages by 2026.

Steve Wozniak's life against the full span of the corpus — the fading end marks a life still in progress.

• The blue box invention
  Early 1970s — the phone-phreaking device that earned him the handle Berkeley Blue —
• Apple I invention
  Hardware, circuit boards and operating system, all his 1976
• Apple II invention
  Integrated color graphics, BASIC in ROM, and eight expansion slots 1977
• Disk II invention
  The floppy drive that replaced cassette storage on the Apple II 1978
• CORE, the first programmable universal remote invention
  Built at CL 9, the company he left Apple to start 1987
• iWoz book
  His autobiography, written with Gina Smith 2006

• June 1971 aged 20 Builds the Cream Soda computer with Bill Fernandez Twenty donated logic chips and punch cards. A visiting reporter stepped on the power cable and destroyed it.
• 1971 aged ~21 Meets Steve Jobs through Fernandez
• 1973 aged ~23 Cuts 50 chips out of Atari's Breakout board Jobs collected the 5,000-dollar bonus, told him it was 700, and handed him 350.
• March 1, 1976 aged 25 Completes the basic design of the Apple I He had already offered it to Hewlett-Packard, which turned it down five times.
• April 1, 1976 aged 25 The Apple Computer Company is formed
• April 1977 aged 26 The Apple II is introduced at the West Coast Computer Faire
• February 7, 1981 aged 30 Crashes a Beechcraft Bonanza at Scotts Valley and loses five weeks of memory The NTSB blamed premature liftoff and pilot inexperience.
• 1985 aged ~35 Leaves Apple, founds CL 9, and receives the National Medal of Technology
• November 2023 aged 73 Suffers a minor stroke before a conference talk in Mexico City He was hospitalized briefly and went home.

• Steve Jobs 1955–2011
  Co-founder of Apple who revolutionized personal computing, music, and mobile communications. co-founded Apple with
• Ronald Reagan 1911–2004
  40th president whose conservative domestic program and assertive Cold War strategy reshaped American politics. awarded him the National Medal of Technology
• Bill Gates b. 1955
  Co-founder of Microsoft who, through the Gates Foundation, has donated billions to global health and education. built the rival platform
• Robert Noyce 1927–1990
  Co-inventor of the integrated circuit and co-founder of Intel, earning him the title Mayor of Silicon Valley. made the chips he built on
• Douglas Engelbart 1925–2013
  Engineer who invented the computer mouse and demonstrated interactive computing in 1968. earlier in the line