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Steve Wozniak, shortly called as
"Woz", is a computer engineer, famous for inventing the first Apple
computers. Growing up in San Jose, California, he was inspired by his father's
electronics job and took interest in re-assembling chips in electronic devices,
recreating game characters in home television, all of which led him to win
numerous awards in science fairs. During high school, he got to know Steve Jobs
and owing to their common interests, they both developed an instant rapport and
went on to work together in optimizing the circuit board for the game
'Breakout', an incident which is notorious for Jobs scamming Wozniak. He was
also a notable prankster, one of which, 'Dial-A-Joke', made him meet Alice
Robertson, whom he passionately pursued by joining the Freemasons, in which she
had been a member. In 1971, due to insufficient money, Wozniak withdrew from
his program at University of California, Berkley, however, he managed to
acquire a job at Hewlett Packard (HP) where he enjoyed his work as a computer
engineer.
During his job at HP, he got involved with
Homebrew Computer club which inspired him to develop computers. This new found
interest ultimately led to the creation of the first Apple computer, Apple 1,
in 1976 and he sold them by starting the company 'Apple' along with Steve Jobs.
But his biggest achievement came few years later - the creation of Apple 2
computers, which was much more sophisticated than its predecessor and which
earned him millions in an extremely short time. Later, in his autobiographical
book iWoz: From Computer Geek to Cult Icon: How I Invented the Personal
Computer, Co-Founded Apple, and Had Fun Doing It , which he wrote to dispel the
rumors concerning him, he clarified that Jobs had no role in the creation of
Apple 2 computers. In 1981, a few weeks before his second marriage with Candice
Clark, he got seriously injured from an airplane crash and suffered from
traumatic memory loss for a while. Upon his recovery and subsequent marriage,
he returned to University of California, Berkley under a pseudonym (because he
was popular at that time) and resumed his undergraduate degree in Electrical
Engineering and Computer Science degree, while throwing rock-themed US
festivals simultaneously, an endeavor which made him lose a considerable amount
of his gathered wealth.
He graduated in 1986 and left Apple in
1987, citing that though there were no bitter feelings, he felt Apple had a
negative influence to his creative knowledge. Since then, he either created or
co-founded a series of companies such as CL-9, Wheels of Zeus, Acquicor
Technology, pursuing his dream for innovation. Eventually, he settled for
another passion of his - teaching school children, which he did for almost ten
years, after divorcing his second wife, Candice. Currently, he is married to
Janet Hill and lives in Los Gatos, California, receiving $120,000 stipend from
Apple every year for owning few of its shares. In his autobiographical book, he
had strongly asserted that he had a good relationship with Steve Jobs right
until his death. Steve Wozniak has received numerous honorary doctorates,
awards and was included into the National Inventors Hall of Fame. He does
philanthropy through his 'Unite Us In Song' organization (http://archive.woz.org/unuson/) and has also appeared
in TV shows and films, one of which was 'Jobs', the 2013 biographical film
about Steve Jobs. Read more about Steve Jobs here: http://businessideaslab.com/steve-jobs-biography-movie/
