Steve Wozniak

Stephen Gary "Woz" Wozniak (born August 11, 1950) is an American computer engineer and programmer who founded Apple Computer, Co. (now Apple Inc.) with co-founders, Steve Jobs, and Ronald Wayne. His inventions and machines are credited with contributing significantly to the personal computer revolution of the 1970s. Wozniak created the Apple I and Apple II computers in the mid-1970s.Wozniak has several nicknames, including "The Woz", "Wonderful Wizard of Woz" and "iWoz" (a reference to the ubiquitous naming scheme for Apple products). "WoZ" (short for Wheels of Zeus") is also the name of a company Wozniak founded. He is sometimes known as the Other Steve" of Apple Computer, the better known Steve being co-founder Steve Jobs. He is of mostly Polish ancestry.
Apple Computer:
n 1970, Wozniak became friends with Steve Jobs, when Jobs worked for the summer at a company where Wozniak was working on a mainframe computer. According to Wozniak's autobiography, iWoz, Jobs had the idea to sell the computer as a fully assembled printed circuit board. Wozniak, at first skeptical, was later convinced by Jobs that even if they were not successful they could at least say to their grandkids they had had their own company. Together they sold some of their possessions (such as Wozniak's HP scientific calculator and Jobs's Volkswagen van), raised USD $1,300, and assembled the first prototypes in Jobs's bedroom and later (when there was no space left) in Jobs's garage. Wozniak's apartment in San Jose was filled with monitors, electronic devices, and some computer games Wozniak had developed, similar to SuperPong but with voice overs to the blips on the screen. Wozniak carried electronic devices with him often, and would entertain party goers with novel devices.
Aircraft accident:
In February 1981, Steve Wozniak crashed his Beechcraft Bonanza while taking off from Santa Cruz Sky Park. The NTSB investigation revealed that Wozniak did not have a "high performance" aircraft endorsement (making him legally unqualified to operate the airplane), and had a "lack of familiarity with [the] aircraft." The cause of the crash was determined to be a premature liftoff, followed by a stall and "mush" into a 12-foot embankment. As a result of the accident, he had retrograde amnesia and temporary anterograde amnesia.
Employment with Apple:
Wozniak did not immediately return to Apple after having recovered from the crash. Instead, he married Clark and returned to UC Berkeley under the name "Rocky Raccoon Clark" (Rocky was his dog's name and Clark his wife's maiden name), finally earning his undergraduate degree in 1986. In May 1982 and 1983, Wozniak also sponsored two US Festivals to celebrate evolving technologies; they ended up as a technology exposition and a rock festival as a combination of music, computers, television and people.
Post-Apple career:
In March 2006, Wozniak attended the FIRST National Competition in Atlanta to show off Lego robots. In 2010, he attended another FIRST event, a regional event in downtown Phoenix Arizona at the Arizona State Fairgrounds.In February 2009, Steve Wozniak joined Fusion-io, a data storage and server company, in Salt Lake City, Utah as their chief scientist.On November 18, 2010, Steve Wozniak gave a speech at the Science & Technology Summit at the World Forum Convention Center in The Hague in which he predicted that Android would be dominant over the iPhone market-wise but the iPhone would retain the quality.
Philanthropy:
Since leaving Apple, Wozniak has provided all the money, as well as a good amount of on-site technical support, for the technology program in his local school district. Un.U.Son. (Unite Us In Song), an organization Wozniak formed to organize the two US Festivals, is now primarily tasked with supporting his educational and philanthropic projects. In 1986, Wozniak lent his name to the Stephen G. Wozniak Achievement Awards (referred to as Wozzie Awards), which he presented to six Bay Area high school and college students for their innovative use of computers in the fields of business, art and music.
Honors and awards:
Wozniak received the National Medal of Technology in 1985 (with Steve Jobs) from US President Ronald Reagan. In December 1989, he received an honorary Doctor of Engineering degree from the University of Colorado at Boulder, where he studied in the late sixties. Later he donated funds to create the "Woz Lab" at the University of Colorado at Boulder. In 1997, he was named a Fellow of the Computer History Museum. Wozniak was a key contributor and benefactor to the Children's Discovery Museum of San Jose; the street in front of the museum has been renamed Woz Way in his honor.In September 2000, Wozniak was inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame, and in 2001 he was awarded the 7th Annual Heinz Award for Technology, the Economy and Employment. The American Humanist Association awarded him the Isaac Asimov Science Award in 2011.In December 2005, Wozniak was awarded an honorary Doctor of Engineering degree from Kettering University. He also received an honorary degrees from North Carolina State University and Nova Southeastern University, and the Telluride Tech Festival Award of Technology. In May 2011, Wozniak received an honorary Doctor of Engineering degree from Michigan State University.On June 22, 2011, he was awarded an honorary degree at Concordia University in Montreal, Canada.
Patents:
Wozniak is listed as the sole inventor on the following patents:
* US Patent No. 4,136,359 - "Microcomputer for use with video display" - for which he was inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame.
* US Patent No. 4,210,959 - "Controller for magnetic disc, recorder, or the like"
* US Patent No. 4,217,604 - "Apparatus for digitally controlling PAL color display"]
* US Patent No. 4,278,972 - "Digitally-controlled color signal generation means for use with display.