Steve Wozniak, co-founder, and brilliant designer behind the early Apple computers dropped out of UC Berkeley to work at HP/launch Apple with Steve Jobs. From a website called the Apple Museum.
Born August 11, 1950, Steve Wozniak grew up in Sunnyvale, California, USA. His passion for electronics developed in 4th grade, when his father, an engineer for Lockheed, guided him into some science fair projects. Crazy about mathematics Woz earned his HAM radio license by 6th grade and by the time he reached college was designing and building whole computers. He studied engineering at the University of California at Berkeley, where he first met Steve Jobs, his future business partner in Apple Computers. Around the mid 1970s Woz decided to drop out of college and take a job at Hewlett-Packard, designing calculators. It was around this time he met legendary phone phreaker “Captain Crunch” aka John Draper and developed the “blue box”, an illegal device which allowed it’s user to make free long distance calls.
In 1975, when personal computers came in kit form and resembled nothing more than a rectangular box with some switches and a few wires, Woz was already thinking in terms of video displays and keyboards. It was during his involvement with the Home Brew Computer Club in Palo Alto, California, that Woz designed and built what would be the Apple I computer. His friend Steve Jobs saw its commercial potential and together they formed Apple Computers, initially selling around 600 Apple Is at a price of $666 each. From here Woz, spurred on by his love of computer games, went on to design the Apple II, which after its unveiling at West Coast Computer Faire in 1977, became the first commercially successful personal computer, and by 1980 Apple Computers was worth $1.2 billion.
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