APPLE’S ROOTS along the southern portion of the San in the 1950s the apricot and peach orchards Francisco Bay gave way to manufacturers of silicon chips These components were the building blocks of the computer industry Companies that relied on silicon moved their headquarters to the region and a journalist dubbed the area Silicon Valley Engineers chemists and computer programmers came to the valley for jobs For kids who loved math and science it was the perfect place to grow up Two of these kids were Stephen Wozniak and Steve Jobs THE TWO STEVES MEET Stephen Woz Wozniak was born in 1950 in the heart of Silicon Valley His father an engineer taught Wozniak about electronics before the boy could read When Wozniak was ten his goal was to own his own computer In his senior year in Silicon Valley with its new industrial growth centered on the silicon chip became the birthplace for many of today’s best-known technology companies including Apple 11
high school Wozniak worked at an electronics company and learned computer programming In his spare time he studied manuals for small computers challenging himself to redesign them with fewer parts Steve Jobs was born in 1955 and moved to Los Altos California with his adoptive family when he was in seventh grade His father a craftsman taught Jobs to pay as much attention to the underside of a cabinet even though it would never be seen as to its surface Jobs joined the Explorer’s Club a group of teens who met on the campus of technology company Hewlett-Packard HP to work on electronics projects When he was 12 Jobs wanted to build a device called a frequency counter but he did not have a key part Assuming Bill Hewlett the founder and chief executive officer CEO of HP would have the necessary part Jobs called the boss at home Hewlett not only gave Jobs the part but also hired the boy for a summer job The two Steves met in 1971 Wozniak was a 20-year-old sophomore at De Anza College and Jobs was 17 and still in high school Wozniak and Jobs were unaware that they shared a common friend 16-year-old Bill Fernandez One day when Fernandez and Jobs were hanging out they ran 12
into Wozniak washing his car They might be interested in meeting each other and doing electronics stuff Fernandez figured 1 THE PARTNERSHIP Financial pressures forced Wozniak to drop out of college at the end of his junior year and his friendship with Jobs waned Wozniak was hired by HP to work on scientific calculators Jobs graduated from high school in 1972 and attended one semester of college He dropped out to travel but he wound up back in his parents house because he was broke In 1973 Jobs got a low-level job at the early video game company Atari AN ILLEGAL PROJECT The first joint technology project between Wozniak and Jobs was illegal In the 1970s the only telephones were landlines and calling long distance was expensive In 1971 Wozniak read a magazine story about hackers who had built a device called a blue box that avoided long distance charges by mimicking the tones used by the phone company for dialed numbers Wozniak invented an improved digital blue box Jobs saw the blue boxes as a chance to make money He and Wozniak manufactured dozens and sold them in Wozniak’s dorm Each box cost 40 to make and sold for 150 Wozniak and Jobs split the profits This experience taught the men how to work together and successfully market a product In 1996 Jobs said I don’t think there would ever have been an Apple computer had there not been blue boxes 2 13 One day Jobs called Wozniak with a proposition His boss wanted him to design and code a video game
