Stephen Wozniak (born August 11 1950) (Polish: Woźniak) is a computer engineer turned philanthropist. His machines come credited using contributing greatly to the entry of computers into private homes & businesses. Wozniak created the Apple II, the survive pc to exist as designed completely by one individual.

Wozniak has many nicknames, including "(The) Woz" & "Wizard of Woz". the previous is besides a title of a company he founded.

Early life and inspiration
Wozniak's early inspirations come from either his father Jerry world health organization was the Lockheed engineer, and from either the fabricated question-son: Tom Swift. His father sick him using fascination for electronics & would typically check out immature Woz's creations. Tom Swift, but then, was for Woz an epitome of originative freedom, scientific knowledge, & a ability to locate solutions to problems. Tom Swift would likewise beautifully illustrate a large awards that await a discoverer. To this day, Wozniak comes back to Tom Swift books & reads the babies to his have children as a form of inspiration.

Woz's values were shaped & strengthened above years by his personal & individual thinking, and moral philosophy, radio amateur ethics (helping people around emergency), books (Fleet's utilitarian & humanitarian attitude) and others.

As a lasting Fleet bequest, throughout his life, Wozniak loved a lot projects that expected heavily intellection, possibly in case it were void of any practicality or even marketability. He learned a basic principles of mathematics and electronics from his father. Whenever Woz was Eleven, he built his have amateur radio station, and had the ham-radio license. At age Baker's dozen, he was elective president of his high school electronics club, & won 1st prize at the science fair for the transistor-based calculator. Likewise at Long dozen, Woz began designing his 1st computers (including of these that can play tic-tac-toe), which laid a engineering foundation of his late profits.

John Draper explained to Wozniak the Blue Box, a device by having which may (mis)utilise a phone system by emulating pulses (we.e. phone phreaking). Although Draper instructed Woz does'nt to green goods & especially nin sell the widget on account of the possibility of existence found, Wozniak built & sold Blue Boxes for $150 a piece. Wozniak met Steve Jobs while working a summertime job at HP, and it began selling blue boxes together. Numbers of of the emptor of their blue boxes were as a matter of fact found & sure enough John Draper was linked to their utilize.

The dawn of Apple
By 1975, Woz dropped out of a University of California, Berkeley (he would later finish his degree around 1987) and come higher using the computer that in time became successful countrywide. Even so, he was largely working in a scope of the Palo Alto-based Homebrew Computer Club, a local class action of electronics hobbyists. His design got there are no wider ambition.

Jobs & Wozniak come to the guide that the entirely assembled & cheap computer would become sought after. It sold occasionally of their prized possessions (e.g. Woz's HP scientific calculator & Steve Jobs' Volkswagen van), raised USD$1300, and assembled a foremost image around Jobs' his pickup. Their number 1 computer was quite engineering wonder in a context of 1975 computing. Around simplicity of let it run went years ahead of the Altair 8800, which was introduced earlier inside 1975. Altair got there is there are no display & no confessedly storage. It received commands vithe a series of switches & one program would take hundreds to thousands of toggles forswearing an error. Altair output was presented in the form of flashing lights. Altair was low for avowedly geeks, however it was non usable for the wider public. It didn't possibly came assembled. Woz's computer, but then, known as Apple I, was the fully assembled & functional unit that contained a $25 microprocessor on a single-circuit board sustaining ROM. In April 1 1976, Jobs and Wozniak formed Apple Computer Company. Wozniak quit his job at Hewlett-Packard & became the vice president inside charge of search and development at Apple. Apple I personally was priced at $666.66. Jobs & Wozniak sold their number 1 25 computers to the local dealer.

Wozniak may nowadays focus good-whale in fixing a defect of Apple We & adding freshly functionality. Apple We earned the company more or less a million dollars. His recently project was to locate a first characteristics: simplicity & usableness. Woz introduced high-guide graphics in the Apple II. His computer may today display pictures instead of merely letters: "I threw in high-res. It was only two chips. I didn't know if people would use it." By 1978, he also designed an cheap floppy-disk drive controller. He & Randy Wigginton wrote the elementary disk operating patterns, adapting a file formulas & elementary cli commissioned from either Shepardson Microsystems to his unique technology.

Additionally to his devices skills, Wozniak wrote virtually all of the package that ran Apple. He wrote the Basic interpreter named Integer BASIC, a placed of virtual 16-bit processor instructions called SWEET16, a Breakout game (which was also a understanding to add healthy to a computer), the code required to control the disk cause, & thomas more. On the software package side, the Apple Two was likewise manufactured further attractive to a business user per noted pioneering spreadsheet: Dan Bricklin and Bob Frankston's VisiCalc. Within 1980, the Apple company went public & processed Jobs & Wozniak millionaires. At a age of Twenty-seven, Jobs was a immature Fortune 500 man in 1982—a very immature age prior to a dot-com era.

The Success of the Apple II
For years a Apple 2 was a independent source of benefit at Apple, & it assured a company's survival once its management undertook very much less profitable ventures prefer a ill-ill-omened Apple III and the short lived Lisa. It was because of a dependbreaa success from either the Apple Two that Apple was able to grow the Macintosh, market it, and bit by bit produce it develop into a machine which is at present at the center of completely Apple products. In a way so, Wozniak may be considered when a fiscal godfather of the Mackintosh.

Inside February 1981, Steve Wozniak crashed his private plane. Following, he experienced irregular short-stm loss. He got there are no recollection of the accident &, awhile, did non possibly understand he experienced been taking part inside the crash. He began to piece together clues from either items humans experienced said to him. He asked his girlfriend, Candy Clark (an early Apple employee world health organization worked within the accounting department), in case he experienced been exposed in an accident of a bit of form. While she told him of the event, his short-term memory was restored. Wozniak too credits computer games for aiding him in restoring victims "lost" memories.

Woz did non go to to Apple when recovering from either a plane crash. Instead, he get hitched with & returned to the University of California, Berkeley under the title "Rocky (Raccoon) Clark", eventually earning his undergrad degree within 1983. Within 1983 he decided to return to Apple product development, however he wanted to become those days are gone than upright an engineer & the motivational factor for the Apple manpower.

Within 1982 & 1983, Wozniak as well sponsored them editions of the US Festival, which were the celebration of evolving technologies & a marriage of music, computers, television & humans.

Post Apple Career
Woz left Apple permanently in February 6, 1985, nine years after setting higher a company. Wozniak so founded the newly venture known as Cloud 9 which developed home remote control switches, bringing the number one universal remote to market inside 1987.

Wozniak & Jobs were gallant to keep around originated an anti-corporate ethic among large players in the computer market. Jobs focused in innovation sustaining his NeXT vision, while Woz went into teaching (he taught fifth grade students) & benevolent activities in the field of education. He has besides hosted Unuson (Unite Us Within Song), formed in a period of the US Festival days which he sponsored.

Recognition and afterward
Steve Wozniak received the National Medal of Technology from the President of the United States in 1985. Within September 2000, Steve Wozniak was inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame.

Inside 1997 he was named the Fellow of the Computer History Museum.

Wozniak was the key contributor & helper to the San Jose Children's Museum. Since allowing Apple Computer, Woz has provided all the money, as well as a practiced total of in-places technical indicator trend lines of the local Los Gatos School territory (a district where he resides & his toddlers attend school).

Around 2001, Woz founded Wheels Of Zeus, acronymed "WoZ", a company that is creating wireless GPS technology to "help everyday people find everyday things". In a equivalent month, he joined the Board of Directors of Danger, Inc., a maker of the HipTop (aka SideKick from either T-Roving).

Within Could of 2004, upon nomination by Dr. Tom Miller, Woz received an honorary Doctor of Science degree from North Carolina State University for his contribution to the field of personal computing.