Engineering
Steve Wozniak
Co-founder of Apple, designer of the Apple I and II
Born 1950
Photo: Gage Skidmore · CC BY-SA 3.0
«Never trust a computer you can't throw out a window.»
Steve Wozniak designed the Apple I and Apple II almost single-handedly, creating the machine that took the personal computer out of the hobbyist garage and into ordinary homes. He later taught computing to school children for years.
Key achievements
- Designed the Apple I and Apple II single-handedly
- Co-founded Apple with Steve Jobs in 1976
Universities
Berkeley, California
Left in 1972 to work at Hewlett-Packard and returned to complete his degree in electrical engineering and computer science in 1986, enrolled under a pseudonym.
Facts
- He enrolled to finish his degree under the name Rocky Raccoon Clark so that nobody would know who he was.
- The Apple II's colour graphics came from a trick he found that used the television signal itself, saving most of the chips a normal design would need.
- He gave away a large share of his Apple stock to early employees who had received none.
Photographs
Photographs come from Wikimedia Commons under free licences; the author and licence are shown on each image.