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le a student in McCollums class, Jobs became friends with a graduate who was the teachers all-time favorite and a school legend for his wizardry in thes. Ste hen Woznia!, whose younger brother had been on a swim team with Jobs, was almost five years older than Jobs and far more

wledgeable about electronics. "ut emotionally and socially he was still a high school gee!.i!e Jobs, Woznia! learned a lot at his fathers !nee. "ut their lessons were different. $aul Jobs was a high school dro out who, when fi%ing u cars,

w how to turn a tidy rofit by stri!ing the right deal on arts. &rancis Woznia!, !nown as Jerry, was a brilliant engineering graduate from Cal 'ech, wheread (uarterbac!ed the football team, who became a roc!et scientist at #oc!heed. )e e%alted engineering and loo!ed down on those in business,eting, and sales. *+ remember him telling me that engineering was the highest level of im ortance you could reach in the world, Steve Woznia! laterlled. *+t ta!es society to a new level.ne of Steve Woznia!s first memories was going to his fathers wor! lace on a wee!end and being shown electronic arts, with his dad * utting them on ae with me so + got to lay with them. )e watched with fascination as his father tried to get a waveform line on a video screen to stay flat so he couldw that one of his circuit designs was wor!ing ro erly. *+ could see that whatever my dad was doing, it was im ortant and good. Woz, as he was !nownn then, would as! about the resistors and transistors lying around the house, and his father would ull out a blac!board to illustrate what they did. *)e

ld e% lain what a resistor was by going all the way bac! to atoms and electrons. )e e% lained how resistors wor!ed when + was in second grade, not(uations but by having me icture it.Wozs father taught him something else that became ingrained in his childli!e, socially aw!ward ersonality /ever lie. *My dad believed in honesty.

reme honesty. 'hats the biggest thing he taught me. + never lie, even to this day. 1'he only artial e%ce tion was in the service of a good ractical.3 +n addition, he imbued his son with an aversion to e%treme ambition, which set Woz a art from Jobs. 4t an 4 le roduct launch event in 5676, fortys after they met, Woz reflected on their differences. *My father told me, 89ou always want to be in the middle, he said. *+ didnt want to be u with the-level eo le li!e Steve. My dad was an engineer, and thats what + wanted to be. + was way too shy ever to be a business leader li!e Steve.

y fourth grade Woznia! became, as he ut it, one of the *electronics !ids. )e had an easier time ma!ing eye contact with a transistor than with a girl, andevelo ed the chun!y and stoo ed loo! of a guy who s ends most of his time hunched over circuit boards. 4t the same age when Jobs was uzzlinga carbon micro hone that his dad couldnt e% lain, Woznia! was using transistors to build an intercom system featuring am lifiers, relays, lights, and

zers that connected the !ids bedrooms of si% houses in the neighborhood. 4nd at an age when Jobs was building )eath!its, Woznia! was assembling asmitter and receiver from )allicrafters, the most so histicated radios available.

Woz s ent a lot of time at home reading his fathers electronics 2ournals, and he became enthralled by stories about new com uters, such as thewerful 0/+4C. "ecause "oolean algebra came naturally to him, he marveled at how sim le, rather than com le%, the com uters were. +n eighth grade he

a calculator that included one hundred transistors, two hundred diodes, and two hundred resistors on ten circuit boards. +t won to rize in a local contestby the 4ir &orce, even though the com etitors included students through twelfth grade.

Woz became more of a loner when the boys his age began going out with girls and artying, endeavors that he found far more com le% than designinguits. *Where before + was o ular and riding bi!es and everything, suddenly + was socially shut out, he recalled. *+t seemed li!e nobody s o!e to me forongest time. )e found an outlet by laying 2uvenile ran!s. +n twelfth grade he built an electronic metronome:one of those tic!-tic!-tic! devices that time in music class:and realized it sounded li!e a bomb. So he too! the labels off some big batteries, ta ed them together, and ut it in a school

er; he rigged it to start tic!ing faster when the loc!er o ened. #ater that day he got called to the rinci als office. )e thought it was because he had won,again, the schools to math rize. +nstead he was confronted by the olice. 'he rinci al had been summoned when the device was found, bravely ranthe football field clutching it to his chest, and ulled the wires off. Woz tried and failed to su ress his laughter. )e actually got sent to the 2uvenile detention

er, where he s ent the night. +t was a memorable e% erience. )e taught the other risoners how to disconnect the wires leading to the ceiling fansconnect them to the bars so eo le got shoc!ed when touching them.etting shoc!ed was a badge of honor for Woz. )e rided himself on being a hardware engineer, which meant that random shoc!s were routine. )ee devised a roulette game where four eo le ut their thumbs in a slot; when the ball landed, one would get shoc!ed. *)ardware guys will lay thise, but software guys are too chic!en, he noted.uring his senior year he got a art-time 2ob at Sylvania and had the chance to wor! on a com uter for the first time. )e learned & >'>4/ from a and read the manuals for most of the systems of the day, starting with the =igital 0(ui ment $=$-?. 'hen he studied the s ecs for the latest

rochi s and tried to redesign the com uters using these newer arts. 'he challenge he set himself was to re licate the design using the fewestonents ossible. 0ach night he would try to im rove his drawing from the night before. "y the end of his senior year, he had become a master. *+ was

designing com uters with half the number of chi s the actual com any had in their own design, but only on a er. )e never told his friends. 4fter all,t seventeen-year-olds were getting their !ic!s in other ways.n 'han!sgiving wee!end of his senior year, Woznia! visited the @niversity of Colorado. +t was closed for the holiday, but he found an engineeringent who too! him on a tour of the labs. )e begged his father to let him go there, even though the out-of-state tuition was more than the family could easilyrd. 'hey struc! a deal )e would be allowed to go for one year, but then he would t ransfer to =e 4nza Community College bac! home. 4fter arriving atorado in the fall of 7ABA, he s ent so much time laying ran!s 1such as roducing reams of rintouts saying *&uc! /i%on 3 that he failed a cou le of hisses and was ut on robation. +n addition, he created a rogram to calculate &ibonacci numbers that burned u so much com uter time the university

atened to bill him for the cost. So he readily lived u to his bargain with his arents and transferred to =e 4nza.

fter a leasant year at =e 4nza, Woznia! too! time off to ma!e some money. )e found wor! at a com any that made com uters for the Californiaor Cehicle =e artment, and a cowor!er made him a wonderful offer )e would rovide some s are chi s so Woznia! could ma!e one of the

uters he had been s!etching on a er. Woznia! decided to use as few chi s as ossible, both as a ersonal challenge and because he did not

t to ta!e advantage of his colleagues largesse.Much of the wor! was done in the garage of a friend 2ust around the corner, "ill &ernandez, who was still at )omestead )igh. 'o lubricate their efforts, they! large amounts of Cragmont cream soda, riding their bi!es to the Sunnyvale Safeway to return the bottles, collect the de osits, and buy more. *'hatswe started referring to it as the Cream Soda Com uter, Woznia! recalled. +t was basically a calculator ca able of multi lying numbers entered by a

f switches and dis laying the results in binary code with little lights.When it was finished, &ernandez told Woznia! there was someone at )omestead )igh he should meet. *)is name is Steve. )e li!es to do ran!s li!e

do, and hes also into building electronics li!e you are. +t may have been the most significant meeting in a Silicon alley garage since )ewlett went$ac!ards thirty-two years earlier. *Steve and + 2ust sat on the sidewal! in front of "ills house for the longest time, 2ust sharing stories:mostly about

n!s wed ulled, and also what !ind of electronic designs wed done, Woznia! recalled. *We had so much in common. 'y ically, it was really hard forto e% lain to eo le what !ind of design stuff + wor!ed on, but Steve got it right away. 4nd + li!ed him. )e was !ind of s!inny and wiry and full ofgy. Jobs was also im ressed. *Woz was the first erson +d met who !new more electronics than + did, he once said, stretching his own e% ertise. *+

d him right away. + was a little more mature than my years, and he was a little less mature than his, so it evened out. Woz was very bright, buttionally he was my age.n addition to their interest in com uters, they shared a assion for music. *+t was an incredible time for music, Jobs recalled. *+t was li!e living at a timen "eethoven and Mozart were alive. >eally. $eo le will loo! bac! on it that way. 4nd Woz and + were dee ly into it. +n articular, Woznia! turned Jobso the glories of "ob =ylan. *We trac!ed down this guy in Santa Cruz who ut out this newsletter on =ylan, Jobs said. *=ylan ta ed all of his concerts,

some of the eo le around him were not scru ulous, because soon there were ta es all around. "ootlegs of everything. 4nd this guy had them all.unting down =ylan ta es soon became a 2oint venture. *'he two of us would go tram ing through San Jose and "er!eley and as! about =ylanlegs and collect them, said Woznia!. *Wed buy brochures of =ylan lyrics and stay u late inter reting them. =ylans words struc! chords of creative

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ing. 4dded Jobs, *+ had more than a hundred hours, including every concert on the BD and BB tour, the one where =ylan went electric. "oth of themght high-end '04C reel-to-reel ta e dec!s. *+ would use mine at a low s eed to record many concerts on one ta e, said Woznia!. Jobs matched hisssion *+nstead of big s ea!ers + bought a air of awesome head hones and would 2ust lie in my bed and listen to that stuff for hours.

obs had formed a club at )omestead )igh to ut on music-and-light shows and also lay ran!s. 1'hey once glued a gold- ainted toilet seat onto aer lanter.3 +t was called the "uc! &ry Club, a lay on the name of the rinci al. 0ven though they had already graduated, Woznia! and his friend 4llen

m 2oined forces with Jobs, at the end of his 2unior year, to roduce a farewell gesture for the de arting seniors. Showing off the )omestead cam usdecades later, Jobs aused at the scene of the esca ade and ointed. *See that balconyE 'hats where we did the banner ran! that sealed our

ndshi . n a big bedsheet "aum had tie-dyed with the schools green and white colors, they ainted a huge hand fli ing the middle-finger salute.ms nice Jewish mother hel ed them draw it and showed them how to do the shading and shadows to ma!e it loo! more real. *+ !now what that is,snic!ered. 'hey devised a system of ro es and ulleys so that it could be dramatically lowered as the graduating class marched ast the balcony,they signed it *SW4" J ", the initials of Woznia! and "aum combined with art of Jobss name. 'he ran! became art of school lore:and gotsus ended one more time.

nother ran! involved a oc!et device Woznia! built that could emit ' signals. )e would ta!e it to a room where a grou of eo le were watching ' ,as in a dorm, and secretly ress the button so that the screen would get fuzzy with static. When someone got u and whac!ed the set, Woznia! would let

f the button and the icture would clear u . nce he had the unsus ecting viewers ho ing u and down at his will, he would ma!e things harder. )e

ld !ee the icture fuzzy until someone touched the antenna. 0ventually he would ma!e eo le thin! they had to hold the antenna while standing on oneor touching the to of the set. 9ears later, at a !eynote resentation where he was having his own trouble getting a video to wor!, Jobs bro!e from hist and recounted the fun they had with the device. *Woz would have it in his oc!et and wed go into a dorm . . . where a bunch of fol!s would be, li!e,hing Star Trek , and hed screw u the ' , and someone would go u to fi% it, and 2ust as they had the foot off the ground he would turn it bac! on, and as

ut their foot bac! on the ground hed screw it u again. Contorting himself into a retzel onstage, Jobs concluded to great laughter, *4nd within fiveutes he would have someone li!e this.

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