Since the 1970s, Steve Wozniak (commonly known as Woz) has become an icon of the tech industry, gaining incredible fame and wealth, but all he really sought out to do was to build computers for himself.
“The fact that it turned out to be the start of a huge, huge industry that we have to this day was chance,” he told an enthralled, sellout crowd while being interviewed by Laura Zimmerman during a Sonoma Speaker Series event at Hanna Center on Monday, Aug. 17.
Driven by a passion for electronics and engineering while growing up in San Jose, he obtained a ham radio license when he was 10 years old and developed formulas for analog electronics. Wozniak then became motivated to create his own computer or parts of a computer.
“I worked my way up with science fair projects not assigned by my school’s science teachers,” he said. “There were no computers and no computer books, so I just taught myself and loved it, knowing it was the passion of my life and that I would never do it as a job.”…