Also known as: Steve Wozniak, Woz, Stephen Wozniak

Steve Wozniak (born 1950) is an American engineer who designed the Apple I and Apple II, hardware that helped turn the personal computer from a hobbyist kit into a consumer product.¹

Life and work

Wozniak built the Apple I as a single-board machine and, with Steve Jobs, co-founded Apple Computer in 1976 to sell it. His 1977 Apple II — with colour graphics, a built-in keyboard, and clever economical use of integrated circuits — became one of the first highly successful mass-produced personal computers.¹ He was known for tight, elegant circuit designs that squeezed maximum capability from minimal parts, including a floppy-disk controller built from a handful of chips.¹

Why they matter

The Apple II showed that an affordable computer built around a modest CPU could reach ordinary homes and schools, seeding the software and hobbyist culture that personal computing grew from. That same culture — accessible hardware plus open tinkering — is the lineage behind today’s SDR and maker projects.¹

Legacy

Widely known as “Woz,” he remains an icon of hands-on engineering and helped define the early personal-computer era before stepping back from day-to-day work at Apple.

Sources

1. Steve Wozniak — Wikipedia, for biography and the Apple I and II. ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴

See also

• Personal computer
• Central processing unit (CPU)
• Computer hardware
• Integrated circuit