Steve Wozniak
What failed
He left the University of Colorado after a year over computer pranks, and later dropped out of Berkeley without finishing. A newspaper reporter stood on the power cable during a demonstration of his first computer and destroyed it. He built a board for Atari so chip-minimal it could not be manufactured, with no on-screen scoring and no coin mechanism; Steve Jobs told him the bonus was seven hundred dollars and handed him three hundred and fifty, and he found out ten years later that it had been five thousand. Then he took the design that became the Apple I to Hewlett-Packard, where he worked and which he did not want to leave, and they turned it down.
What happened next
He and Jobs formed a company in April 1976 and sold the Apple I that summer. The Apple II followed in 1977 with a processor, a keyboard, colour graphics and a floppy drive, and made the personal computer an ordinary object.
The point
He has said many times that HP turned it down five times. No account — including his own — ever dates the five occasions, names anyone, or gives the grounds, and no HP document has surfaced. What is documented is that he was an HP engineer, that he had the design finished by March 1976, that HP did not take it, and that he stayed out of loyalty until he could not. That is the useful version: the people best placed to see it were the people who saw it first.
The sequence
5 documented failures, shown with the successes in between. Every entry carries its own source — the wins are part of the record, and leaving them out is how these stories get distorted.
- 1969
He leaves university after a year, following discipline over computer pranks.
- 1971
A reporter stands on the power cable during a demonstration and destroys his first computer.
- 1972
He and Jobs are robbed at gunpoint and one of their devices is taken.
- 1973
He drops out of Berkeley without a degree, and does not finish it for another decade.
- 1975
His Atari board cannot be manufactured, and he is paid a fraction of the bonus. He learns the real figure ten years later.
- 1976
He offers the design to the company he works for and does not want to leave. They decline.
- 1976
He and Jobs form a company instead, and sell the Apple I that summer.
- 1977
The Apple II turns the personal computer into an ordinary object.
Sources
- Steve Wozniak (National Inventors Hall of Fame)
Just one year later, he and Jobs co-founded Apple Computer, and began selling the rudimentary systems out of Jobs’ garage.
- Wozniak and the Story of the PC (National Inventors Hall of Fame)
The Apple II was introduced by Wozniak and Jobs in 1977, featuring a central processing unit, a keyboard, color graphics and a floppy disk drive.
- Breakout: Breakaway IV, October 1978 (Atari Archive)
Wozniak’s design for the game was missing key features, such as sound and coin control, and also dropped on-screen scoring in lieu of an LED panel, but it worked as a starting point.
- Apple I (Wikipedia)
Apple Computer was founded as a partnership on April 1, 1976, by Wozniak, Jobs, and Ronald Wayne.
Use the ← and → keys to move between entries.
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