Steve Wozniak is on Coast-to-Coast tonight talking about his enthusiasm for technology and discovery. It’s a wonderful interview.
He’s talking about his early years: how he got started in technology and how most of the things he did were by accident. He didn’t set out to do them–he discovered them.
I’ve never heard Woz speak before and I see I’ve been missing out. He’s an extremely enthusiastic speaker. I’d always read that he was so quiet. Not even close.
Here’s one gem: As a kid he’d go to the Standford Linear Accelerator on the weekends to see what computer manuals he could get. He found people were willing to pass along system manuals to him. His rule was simple: “Wherever there are smart people working, there are open doors.” How true.
As a high-school senior Woz designed computers on paper as a high-school kid, competing with himself to make his designs with as few as chips as possible. He didn’t share them with anyone–except one friend. (His father knew he was designing computers, but he didn’t get into any details with him.)
Interestingly Woz wrote every program and designed every computer in ink–forcing himself to be very accurate.
He’s talking about the first time he saw the Nova computer and was amazed by its design. It used far fewer parts that he’d seen other computers designed with. He says he learned a lot from that computer and that this has stuck with him throughout his career. This is fascinating, because I thought the very same thing when I first saw the Apple I schematics. It was so elegant. At the time I was building S100 and some breadboard systems and I was blown away by how efficient the use of hardware was. It really got me thinking about how valuable a combination of hardware and software can be.