Steve Wozniak

Steve Wozniak is an American electrical engineer and entrepreneur — one of the two co-founders of Apple Computer Inc. (with Steve Jobs and Ronald Wayne). He was born Stephen Gary Wozniak on August 11, 1950, in San Jose, California, into a Silicon Valley engineer family — his father Francis Jacob Wozniak was a Lockheed Aerospace engineer. He attended the University of California, Berkeley (where he met Steve Jobs in 1971 through mutual friend Bill Fernandez), and worked at Hewlett-Packard from 1972 to 1976.

His 1976 co-founding of Apple Computer Inc. with Steve Jobs and Ronald Wayne — at Jobs's parents' Los Altos, California garage — launched the American personal-computer industry. Wozniak single-handedly designed and built both the Apple I (1976) and the Apple II (1977) — the two foundational Apple products.

The Apple II — released April 1977 — was the first commercially successful mass-produced personal computer in American history. Wozniak's Apple II hardware design produced multiple engineering innovations — particularly the floppy-disk controller (designed from scratch in two weeks in 1977), the hardware-based color-graphics-and-sound capabilities, and the seven-expansion-slot design that launched the third-party Apple II software and hardware ecosystem.

His February 7, 1981 Beechcraft Bonanza A36 plane crash at Scotts Valley, California — in which he was seriously injured — shaped his subsequent Apple Computer engagement. He effectively departed Apple Computer in 1985 (though he remained on the Apple payroll for decades as a ceremonial employee). His post-Apple career has included founding the CL 9 universal-remote-control company (1987–1990), teaching computer science at the Los Gatos Union School District (1990s), and continuous technology-conference public speaking. He authored the 2006 memoir iWoz.

His name Steve is the English short form of Stephen (from the Greek Stephanos meaning "crown"). Steve has been a leading American boys' name for over a century.