Steve Wozniak
Section: Technology Essays
You had to be a wizard to even unlock its potential. However that was what it had and a retailer by the name of Paul Terrell ordered 50 apple I computers for his stores at the wholesale price of 589 dollars. To get attention it was decided that he would sell them for 666.66 dollars. That was another example of the Steve Jobs affect. The next invention of the great Woz was the Apple II. It had several improvements like the 4k of memory. It used a not included TV set as the monitor. It would become the first truly mass produced personal computer in history. Steve loved working on the Apple II it was his baby and by 1977 he had built something very special. Big business began to get in the way on the great things he was doing. In 1980 Apple Computer went public for 22 dollars a share. It was worth at that time 117 million dollars. Three years later it was valued at 985 million.
Steve Wozniak after being a college dropout and a complete electronic nerd was now worth 135.6 million dollars. That was only about 7 percent of the company. Jobs was worth at the time 235 million dollars, and several others had there forks in Apple's pie. Even Woz's first wife got some stock in a divorce settlement years earlier was now worth 42 million dollars. After all the money was made other problems began to arise. The money gave Woz a new avenue to do things he had always wanted like own planes and fly them. Being the easy go lucky guy he was his money was spread to the family and his friends. He even sponsored a concert tour and lost millions. In 1981 he had a plane crash and had to take some time to recover. Upon his return two years later he would find a new toy at Apple the Macintosh, which was Jobs new baby. It competed with the Apple II line which was the best selling computer in the entire history of the world.
Also the Apple II got no respect and it was what started the company and was the breadwinner. In between was a failure called the Apple III. Even though Woz had laid the groundwork for the company he was being tossed away like an old toy. Finally after becoming disgusted with the company he just stopped coming to work, sold his 7 percent and moved onto other things. Now he spend his days trying to stimulate 8th graders minds as a schoolteacher in California and enjoying his 6 children. In conclusion Steve Wozniak was a special individual who had a vision and went for it and made it happen. It wasn't money or power it was the search for an easier way to do things that no one else would do. In this paper the emphasis has been put on Steve Wozniak.
This was done because I feel he has never had his fare share of the glory. Like I said earlier I had never heard of the man who should be known as the father of the personal computer. Apple computer needed Steve Wozniak but it also needed Steve Jobs. Without either of them Apple Computer would have failed or not even been created. Without Jobs the wonderful machine Woz created would never had made it out of the garage. Without Woz, Jobs would just be a jealous dreamer. When the company was first starting the CEO at the time began giving out employee numbers and since engineers are more important than businessmen Steve Wozniak became Apple Computer employee number one. Which also drove Jobs crazy. Jobs even requested being employee number zero. Really all this was pretty good for a college drop out and a man that barely graduated high school.
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