{"id":18060,"date":"2018-01-15T08:00:30","date_gmt":"2018-01-15T16:00:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.autodesk.com\/products\/eagle\/blog\/?p=2061"},"modified":"2023-07-10T12:14:30","modified_gmt":"2023-07-10T19:14:30","slug":"steve-wozniak-computer-industry","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.autodesk.com\/products\/fusion-360\/blog\/steve-wozniak-computer-industry\/","title":{"rendered":"Steve Wozniak & the Computer Industry"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Wizard of Woz: How Steve Wozniak Changed the Computer Industry Forever<\/span><\/h2>\n\n\n

We all know about Steve Jobs. Inventor of devices that revolutionized the music industry and smartphones. But at the backdrop of sensation that is Apple and Jobs stands one humble engineer that often gets overlooked, Steve Wozniak, the Woz. Without Woz\u2019s engineering genius, the Apple of today would never be. And the computer industry? Someone else would have had to design the first personal computer. This is the life of Steve Wozniak as we know it today.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n

Loving Electronics Early<\/h2>\n\n\n

Woz grew up loving electronics as a kid and made a ton of devices from scratch including a voltmeter, ham radio, calculator, and various games. His interest in electronics likely stemmed from his father, an electrical engineer that worked for Lockheed Missiles and Space Company in Sunnyvale, California. Sunnyvale had yet to be dubbed the now famous Silicon Valley.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Wozniak reports that he always had a gift for mathematics, science, and electronics, and so that\u2019s the path he pursued. After finishing high school, he attended the University of Colorado at Boulder in 1968, then dropped out a year later. When he returned to California he attended a community college, then the University of California, Berkeley. Again his tour with formal education ended early. The Woz was clearly a self-starter.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Steve Wozniak in his early years. (Image source<\/a>)<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Throughout the 1970s Steve worked at several electronics companies in San Francisco before landing a position at Hewlett-Packard in 1975. It\u2019s during this time that Woz\u2019s true engineering genius really came to shine.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n

The Blue Box<\/h2>\n\n\n

One of the first well-known devices that Wozniak designed was a digital version of the Blue Box. This inconspicuous little device used a 2600hz tone to control telephone switching. By emitting a specific tone, Woz\u2019s device was able to enter AT&T\u2019s operator mode, which allowed a user to jump from trunk to trunk on AT&T\u2019s telephone network to route calls wherever you pleased. All for free.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Woz\u2019s Blue Box now resides in the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, CA. (Image source<\/a>)<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

It was also during this time that Wozniak met Steve Jobs. The duo ended up teaming up on the Blue Box, with Woz designing it and Steve selling it to his fellow students. As Jobs goes on to explain, the Blue Box played a huge role in Apple\u2019s future success:<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\u201cIf it hadn\u2019t been for the Blue Boxes, there would have been no Apple. I\u2019m 100% sure of that. Woz and I learned how to work together, and we gained the confidence that we could solve technical problems and actually put something into production.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

The Woz and Jobs reportedly called the Pope with his famous Blue Box by faking the identity of Henry Kissinger. As the story goes, the Pope was asleep at the time, and so the cardinal staff started to wake up management in succession until the Woz and Jobs couldn\u2019t hold their joke together. Just two kids having a good time.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Unfortunately, the Blue Box trick doesn\u2019t work anymore as all telephone systems have been converted to digital signaling. However, if you’re dying to build a replica of Woz\u2019s design, you can always take a trip down phone-phreak memory lane with this <\/span>Blue Box replica design project<\/span><\/a>. The schematic and PCB layout are already ready-to-go for EAGLE. It\u2019s a pretty simple design, consisting of a set of audio oscillators, a telephone keyboard, audio amplifier, and speaker. <\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Woz and Jobs checking out their Blue Box device. (Image source<\/a>)<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n

The Birth of Apple<\/h2>\n\n\n

Now that Woz and Jobs knew they could team up to create a product together, it was time to set their sights on something bigger. 1975 started it all. It was during this year that the Altair 8800 microcomputer kit was released, which was based on the world\u2019s first microprocessor from Intel.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The Altair 8800 featured in the Smithsonian Museum. (Image source<\/a>)<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Woz couldn\u2019t afford the Altair kit, so he decided to design his own while working as an engineering intern at HP. Woz took his completed computer circuit board to HP\u2019s management to develop, but they weren\u2019t interested. Steve Jobs was though, and he saw an opportunity to market what is now known as the Apple I. It was just a circuit board with several memory chips, but it was far more capable than the Altair 8800.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Woz and Jobs holding the Apple I motherboard. (Image source<\/a>)<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

To get their first preview started, Woz sold his HP scientific calculator and Jobs sold his Volkswagen van. This gave the duo just enough money to put together their first prototype to debut at the Homebrew Computer Club in 1976. It\u2019s here that Paul Terrell, owner of a computer chain store, decided to buy 50 assembled Apple I\u2019s from Woz and Jobs for $500 each. The team had a problem, how were the two going to get all of the money to fulfill the order?<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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One of the most classic photos of Wozniak and Jobs in the early days. (Image source<\/a>)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

With some careful negotiations by Jobs, the duo was able to secure the parts they needed with a loan from a supplier. With the help of some friends, Woz and Jobs put delivered Paul Terrell\u2019s  50 \u201cassembled\u201d computers and paid off the loan from their supplier the day before the bill came due.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Apple I sold for $666.66. Woz and Jobs were unaware of any satanic relationship to the numbering, and Woz has always insisted that he just had a love for repeating numbers. Looking at the specs of the Apple I reveals some interesting genius from Woz. The motherboard came with 4K RAM, which was expandable to 65K with some clever hacking skills. The full specs include:<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n