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Steve Wozniak was born in San Jose, California on August 11, 1950.
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Wozniak transferred from the University of Colorado to the University of California, Berkeley after being expelled for sending prank messages on the university's computer system.
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He worked for the arcade game company, Atari. There, he helped Steve Jobs reduce the amount of chips needed for the game, Breakout. Wozniak used RAM for the brick representation. This link is for an interview Wozniak did where he explains how he created Breakout: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=17eUExffa5w
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While in college, Wozniak worked at Hewlett-Packard, tasked with designing calculators. While working at Hewlett-Packard, Wozniak was introduced to Steve Jobs by a former classmate. Here is a link where Wozniak talks about his time at Hewlett-Packard: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UMRmG72LBU8
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Wozniak designed the hardware, circuit board, and operating system for the Apple I in 1976. He originally offered the computer to Hewlett-Packard, but was denied five times. Wozniak was convinced by Jobs to create a company themselves and sell the assembled printed circuit board.
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Wozniak and Jobs formed the Apple company on April 1, 1976. Wozniak resigned from Hewlett-Packard and became the VP of Apple in charge of research and development. Here is a link of Wozniak talking about the story behind Apple: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B7sktJOoyvs
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Wozniak was involved in a plane crash with his fiancee, her brother, and her brother's girlfriend. He sustained several injuries and had anterograde amnesia. After the crash, he took a break from Apple to recover.
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He received the National Medal of Technology in 1985 alongside Steve Jobs from Ronald Reagan
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As Apple became more successful, Wozniak believed the company was holding him back from who he wanted to be due to his management responsibilities as Vice President. He wanted to continue creating and engineering, something he wasn't able to do at Apple, so he left in 1985 and sold most of his stock.
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After leaving the Apple company, he developed the CL 9, the first programmable universal remote control in 1985.
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After leaving Apple, Wozniak continued his schooling at UC Berkeley and completed his degree. He even had to enroll under a pseudonym because his name was well known.
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Wozniak helped found the Electronic Frontier Foundation and helped provide initial funding, as well as served on the Board of Directors. The EFF is an international non-profit digital rights group that provides funds of legal defense in court to protect individuals and their technology from corporations, government, and abusive legal threats.
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Wozniak was inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame in 2000. The National Inventors Hall of Fame is for recognizing individual engineers and inventors who hold a U.S. patent of highly significant technology
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Wozniak founded 'Wheels of Zeus", a company focused on creating wireless GPS technology. The locator tag consisted of three parts: the smart tag, the tag detector, and the WoZ Service. The company shut down in 2006.
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Wozniak founded Woz U, a company that focuses on technical education. Here is a link where the Woz U curriculum team talks with Wozniak: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xICx-pLqiNI
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Wozniak won the Human of the Year Award, which highlighted his work in the Inspiring Children Foundation.
