Paul Freiberger - All About Steve Wozniak

All About
Steve Wozniak

Paul Freiberger & Michael Swaine

All About Steve Wozniak

Copyright 2017 by Paul Freiberger, Michael Swaine

Published by Blue River Press

Indianapolis, Indiana

www.brpressbooks.com

Distributed by Cardinal Publishers Group

A Tom Doherty Company, Inc.

www.cardinalpub.com

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a database or other retrieval system, or transmitted in any form, by any means, including mechanical, photocopy, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

ISBN: 978-1-68157-097-6

Author: Paul Freiberger, Michael Swaine

Editor: Dani McCormick

Interior Illustrator: Amber Calderon

Book Design: Dave Reed

Cover Artist: Jennifer Mujezinovic

Cover Design: David Miles

Printed in the United States of America

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All About
Steve Wozniak

Computers are in your life all the time, quietly doing all kinds of jobs. Your phone is really a computer. So is the family car. Computers are part of everything from refrigerators to TVs.

Steve Wozniak had computers figured out as a fourth-grader. Hes the same kid who said that the logic that computers use became the heart of my existence, there in the fifth grade.

Steve was a nerdy kid, to be sure, but he may not have ended up being the kind of person youd expect him to be. He went on to do some great things with his life, things youll recognize when we catch up with him years later.

He didnt spend his time as some kind of electronics hermit. He put on music festivals, he was on Dancing with the Stars, and after he became a multi-millionaire, he decided to spend a lot of his time teaching kids about computers.

Steve was a huge part of making Apple the company it is today. His work influenced computer design and development in remarkable ways and touches our lives in places far beyond Apple. His story is a lot more interesting than the one youd expect to tell about the life of an engineer.

Steve Wozniak is not the man people think of first when the story of Apple is told. They usually think of Steve Jobs. However, our Steve has his own compelling story. His name is Stephan Gary Wozniak, and while he may not be as famous as Steve Jobs, his story is just as important.

He was born Stephannot StephenGary Wozniak in 1950. His story starts with a spelling error. Its an odd glitch in the life of someone whose work would be all about making complex things work with elegance and precision.

Margaret Wozniak meant to name her son Stephen with an e, but somehow it got spelled with an a on his birth certificate, making him Stephan. He chose to ignore the official spelling and go with what his mom had wanted. It wouldnt be the last time Woz ignored what officials expected and did what he wanted.

Woz. Thats what the other kids in the neighborhood called him. Its what his co-workers would call him later in life. Woz is the name hes always gone by and that hes made famous. It was never the kind of name that fit well with formal institutions like schools, colleges, and corporations, but things like that never seemed to bother Woz.

Despite the glitch of his misspelled name, his early life seemed almost engineered for someone who would spend his life with computers and technology.

Margaret Wozniak pushed her children to succeed and encouraged them to find their passion

Woz grew up in the Santa Clara Valley of California in a suburb that was surrounded on three sides by fruit orchards. In many ways, it was a classic 1950s setting: a group of modest single-family homes where the dads went to work, the moms mostly stayed at home, and the kids played in the neighborhood.

This was the beginning of the tech center of Silicon Valley, and the dads were mostly engineers working in the local electronics and engineering companies like Lockheed and Sylvania. The kids mostly played with electronics.

Wozs dad, Frank Wozniak, was no exception. Someone told Woz that his dad had been a football hero in college. It didnt click for Woz. To him, Dad was an engineer, first, last, and always. As for what he did, that was a real mystery. He worked at Lockheed, Woz knew. But dad wasnt allowed to talk about his job. It was all top-secret missile work, and talking about those projects was strictly forbidden.

Wozs dad worked for Lockheed, which made planes and missiles

Talking about electronics in general, however, was a different story, and here Woz truly lucked out.

Having an engineer for a father meant that there were always tools, wires, and electronic components like resistors available in the Wozniak household. A kid interested in how things worked had something concrete to focus his curiosity on.

And Wozs dad had a gift for teaching. He was happy to help his son learn about the field he knew well. He was good at customizing his explanations so that they made sense to Woz, even when he was young.

But his dad didnt dumb things down for Woz. He just took it step-by-step.

One day, Woz found some resistors on the kitchen table and asked what they were. His dad didnt answer him directly. Instead, he started from scratch with an explanation that built up from atoms and electrons and went on for weeks.

Woz wasnt bored. He really wanted to understand, and his dads step-by-step teaching was just what he needed for real understanding.

That step-by-step approach to learning a subject, where you start at the beginning and gradually build on that, is the method that Woz stuck to throughout his life. As a result, Woz always knew that his solutions went to the heart of the problems he was trying to solve. He knew that they were fundamentally sound.

As a child, Woz played with his siblings and mom and enjoyed getting new gadgets for Christmas

There was something else Woz was getting from these lessons in engineering. Wozs dad was proud to be an engineer. He loved what he did. And Woz picked up that passion. He began to feel that life as an engineer was the most interesting and enjoyable thing imaginable.

He also saw that it was useful, and that made an impression on him, too. Engineers built things that other people needed. So an engineer could do a lot of good in the world. From the beginning, Woz was convinced that all this learning had to be worthwhile for everyone.

All of those things came together in Wozs first real electronics project when he was just six years old. It was impressive for his age.

The project started with a crystal radio kit his dad gave him, along with a challenge. Wozs task was simple. He had to scrape a bit of the gunk off a penny, attach a wire to it, and touch that wire to some earphones.