Steve Wozniak

His mother, Margaret Louise Wozniak (née Kern) (1923–2014), was from Washington state, and his father, Francis Jacob "Jerry" Wozniak (1925–1994) of Michigan, was an engineer for the Lockheed Corporation.

Stephen Gary Wozniak (born August 11, 1950), also known by his nickname "Woz", is an American electrical engineer, computer programmer, philanthropist, and inventor.

Stephen Gary Wozniak was born on August 11, 1950, in San Jose, California.

Wozniak graduated from Homestead High School in 1968, in Cupertino, California.

Steve has one brother, Mark Wozniak, a former tech executive who lives in Menlo Park.

He also has one sister, Leslie Wozniak.

She attended Homestead High School in Cupertino.

She is a grant adviser at Five Bridges Foundation, which helps at-risk youths in San Francisco.

She once said it was her mother who introduced activism to her and her siblings.

The name on Wozniak's birth certificate is "Stephan Gary Wozniak", but his mother said that she intended it to be spelled "Stephen", which is what he uses.

He has mentioned the surname "Wozniak" being Polish.

In 1969, Wozniak returned to the San Francisco Bay Area after being expelled from the University of Colorado Boulder in his first year for hacking the university's computer system.

Through his work at Apple in the 1970s and 1980s, he is widely recognized as one of the most prominent pioneers of the personal computer revolution.

In the early 1970s, Wozniak's blue box design earned him the nickname "Berkeley Blue" in the phreaking community.

Wozniak has credited watching Star Trek and attending Star Trek conventions while in his youth as a source of inspiration for his starting Apple Computer.

In his autobiography, iWoz, he also credits the Tom Swift Jr. books as an inspiration for becoming an engineer.

He re-enrolled at De Anza College in Cupertino before transferring to the University of California, Berkeley, in 1971.

In June of that year, for a self-taught engineering project, Wozniak designed and built his first computer with his friend Bill Fernandez.

Predating useful microprocessors, screens, and keyboards, and using punch cards and only 20 TTL chips donated by an acquaintance, they named it "Cream Soda" after their favorite beverage.

A newspaper reporter stepped on the power supply cable and blew up the computer, but it served Wozniak as "a good prelude to my thinking 5 years later with the Apple I and Apple II computers".

Before focusing his attention on Apple, he was employed at Hewlett-Packard (HP), where he designed calculators.

It was during this time that he dropped out of Berkeley and befriended Steve Jobs.

Wozniak was introduced to Jobs by Fernandez, who attended Homestead High School with Jobs in 1971.

Jobs and Wozniak became friends when Jobs worked for the summer at HP, where Wozniak, too, was employed, working on a mainframe computer.

"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."

Their first business partnership began later that year when Wozniak read an article titled "Secrets of the Little Blue Box" from the October 1971 issue of Esquire, and started to build his own "blue boxes" that enabled one to make long-distance phone calls at no cost.

Jobs, who handled the sales of the blue boxes, managed to sell some two hundred of them for $150 each, and split the profit with Wozniak.

Jobs later told his biographer that if it had not been for Wozniak's blue boxes, "there wouldn't have been an Apple."

In 1973, Jobs was working for arcade game company Atari, Inc. in Los Gatos, California.

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.

In 1975, Wozniak started developing the Apple I into the computer that launched Apple when he and Jobs first began marketing it the following year.

In 1976, he co-founded Apple Computer with his early business partner Steve Jobs.

He primarily designed the Apple II, introduced in 1977, known as one of the first highly successful mass-produced microcomputers, while Jobs oversaw the development of its foam-molded plastic case and early Apple employee Rod Holt developed its switching power supply.

With human–computer interface expert Jef Raskin, Wozniak had a major influence over the initial development of the original Apple Macintosh concepts from 1979 to 1981, when Jobs took over the project following Wozniak's brief departure from the company due to a traumatic airplane accident.

After permanently leaving Apple in 1985, Wozniak founded CL 9 and created the first programmable universal remote, released in 1987.

He then pursued several other businesses and philanthropic ventures throughout his career, focusing largely on technology in K–12 schools.

As of February 2020, Wozniak has remained an employee of Apple in a ceremonial capacity since stepping down in 1985.

In recent years, he has helped fund multiple entrepreneurial efforts dealing in areas such as GPS and telecommunications, flash memory, technology and pop culture conventions, technical education, ecology, satellites and more.