‘Woz’ shares story with entrepreneurs

Starting in Steve Jobs’ garage 35 years ago, two young entrepreneurs created a company that has widely come to represent innovation and technology.

Steve “Woz” Wozniak spoke to young entrepreneurs and professors about his role in the formation of Apple and offered advice to budding enterprisers yesterday during the third annual Entrepreneurship Day.

“When we started Apple, we were very young in our 20s. We had no money. We had no savings accounts,” Wozniak said in the College Avenue Gym. “We had no business experience. We did not take any course in business or finance. It’s almost as though finance was not a part of life … we just had some inspiration.”

Apple’s founding branches back to Wozniak’s childhood, when he began inventing a telephone-like device with childhood friends.

Wozniak and his friends used running wires connected and stapled along neighborhood fences to create microphones and speakers in receiving houses — wired walkie-talkies.

“I started learning about atoms and the parts of atoms, then electrons, then taking those processes and switches of lights and buzzers, which in turn make buzzers ring … and wires go around the circuit to make things happen,” he said. “[I] got together with friends and [we] made it our personal project.”

When Wozniak was 10 years old, he received his ham radio operator license and built his own ham radio — an amateur radio that uses a designated frequency for private recreational purposes.

He continued to be innovative throughout the years, creating a working model of an atom and its electron receptor sites, each corresponding to a light up element.

“It starts with childhood inspiration — movies and TV shows and their hero,” he said. “Sometimes these heroes are inventors like Thomas Edison. They do these creative things that nobody would expect before, and I wanted to be an engineer because engineers could build things like that and make life easier.”

Wozniak tackled his next project by writing a program to solve the “Knight’s Tour” chess game, but the program was unsuccessful and he moved his focus to computing.

“You need a brain to think out their approaches,” he said. “I moved on.”

After Wozniak found a small computer manual while working at his high school job, he saw the complexity of computers and centered on redesigning it using fewer parts. He often snuck into Stanford University buildings after hours to study computers.

“What I found out is: where really bright people worked, they always left the doors unlocked,” he said. “[I studied the] computers the company [was putting out] at the time. Eventually my designs were half as many parts.”

While at the University of California Berkley, Wozniak took a year to work and pay off his college education. During that year off, he was introduced to Steve Jobs.

“We met on the sidewalk. He was a lighter, had-no-money sort of guy, living the life of the hippy,” he said.

Wozniak said the two compared technology pranks each pulled and became friends. With Wozniak as the designer and Jobs as the face of the company, the two started working on a blue box telephone transistor. They later went on to develop models of the Apple I computer.

Wozniak said he designed the hardware, circuit board and operating system for Apple I himself.

“I knew the formula to build that computer. I told my dad what I was going to have,” he said. “[I found] the basic language [that was] right for personal computers.”

Wozniak and Jobs later created what would become Apple the company, he said.

University President Richard L. McCormick said Wozniak is one of the leading innovators of his time and continues to exhibit a spirit of entrepreneurship that students could emulate.

“Entrepreneurship is a spirit that has driven some members of society to incredible success and has benefited them as well by giving us the supplies to fight disease [and] communicate instantly with someone half way around the world,” he said.

McCormick said Wozniak is not only an entrepreneur, but also a model of unconventional thinkers.

“His joint efforts with another genius brought about the Apple computer, which revolutionized computing and ultimately changed the way we learn, communicate, work and play,” he said.

The University is accommodating entrepreneurship by creating hacker spaces, or do-it-yourself spaces, where students can get together and explore ideas for future products and create models, said Richard Mammone, professor of Supply Chain Management and Marketing Science.

Mammone said most of the breaks from traditional technology start from small startup companies.

“Steve Wozniak and Steve Jobs met through a [Homebrew] Computer Club [and] as an outcome of that, Apple [Inc.] evolved,” he said. “Maybe the future Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak will get together and create the new Apple.”