Stephen Gary Wozniak (/ˈwɒzniæk/; born August 11, 1950), also known by his nickname Woz, is an American technology entrepreneur, electrical engineer, computer programmer, philanthropist, and inventor.

[9][10] In recent years, he has helped fund multiple entrepreneurial efforts dealing in areas such as GPS and telecommunications, flash memory, technology and pop culture conventions, technical education, ecology, satellites and more.

[13]: 1  In June of that year, for a self-taught engineering project, Wozniak designed and built his first computer with his friend Bill Fernandez.

[13]: 1 Predating useful microprocessors, screens, and keyboards, and using punch cards and only 20 TTL chips donated by an acquaintance, they named it "Cream Soda" after their favorite beverage.

The club was one of several key centers which established the home hobbyist era, essentially creating the microcomputer industry over the next few decades.

[40] Jobs then advised Wozniak to start a business of their own to build and sell bare printed circuit boards of the Apple I.

[41] After the company was formed, Jobs and Wozniak made one last trip to the Homebrew Computer Club to give a presentation of the fully assembled version of the Apple I.

[34]: 66–67  Terrell told Jobs that he would order 50 units of the Apple I and pay $500 (equivalent to $2,680 in 2023) each on delivery, but only if they came fully assembled, as he was not interested in buying bare printed circuit boards.

[13]: 7 [34]: 66–67 Together the duo assembled the first boards in Jobs's parents' Los Altos home; initially in his bedroom and later (when there was no space left) in the garage.

Wozniak's apartment in San Jose was filled with monitors, electronic devices, and computer games that he had developed.

[clarification needed] In November 1976, Jobs and Wozniak received substantial funding from a then-semi-retired Intel product marketing manager and engineer named Mike Markkula.

[43][13]: 10  At the request of Markkula, Wozniak resigned from his job at HP and became the vice president in charge of research and development at Apple.

[48] During the early design and development phase of the original Macintosh, Wozniak had a heavy influence over the project along with Jef Raskin, who conceived the computer.

The Macintosh would also go on to introduce the desktop publishing industry with the addition of the Apple LaserWriter, the first laser printer to feature vector graphics.

"[3][8] On February 7, 1981, the Beechcraft Bonanza A36TC which Wozniak was piloting (and not qualified to operate[50]) crashed soon after takeoff from the Sky Park Airport in Scotts Valley, California.

Wozniak sustained severe face and head injuries, including losing a tooth, and also suffered for the following five weeks from anterograde amnesia, the inability to create new memories.

[5] The National Transportation Safety Board investigation report cited premature liftoff and pilot inexperience as probable causes of the crash.

[48] Infinite Loop characterized this time: "Coming out of the semi-coma had been like flipping a reset switch in Woz's brain.

"[53]: 322 Later in 1981, after recovering from the plane crash, Wozniak re-enrolled at UC Berkeley to complete his Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences degree that he started there in 1971 (and which he would finish in 1986).

[24][3] In May 1982 and 1983, Wozniak, with help from professional concert promoter Bill Graham, founded the company Unuson, an abbreviation of "unite us in song",[56] which sponsored two US Festivals, with "US" pronounced like the pronoun, not as initials.

[59] Even with the success he had helped to create at Apple, Wozniak believed that the company was hindering him from being who he wanted to be, and that it was "the bane of his existence".

After his career at Apple, Wozniak founded CL 9 in 1985, which developed and brought the first programmable universal remote control to market in 1987, called the "CORE".

[5] Beyond engineering, Wozniak's second lifelong goal had always been to teach elementary school because of the important role teachers play in students' lives.

To compete with the Lisa, Jobs and his new team produced a cheaper computer, one that, according to Wozniak, was "weak", "lousy" and "still at a fairly high price".

[3] Also since leaving Apple, Wozniak has provided all the money, and much onsite technical support, for the technology program in his local school district in Los Gatos.

If we build these devices to take care of everything for us, eventually they'll think faster than us and they'll get rid of the slow humans to run companies more efficiently.

Wozniak stated that he had started to identify a contradictory sense of foreboding about artificial intelligence, while still supporting the advance of technology.

[96] Wozniak describes his impetus for joining the Freemasons in 1979 as being able to spend more time with his then-wife, Alice Robertson, who belonged to the Order of the Eastern Star, associated with the Masons.

[99][100] After a high-profile relationship with actress Kathy Griffin, who described him on Tom Green's House Tonight in 2008 as "the biggest techno-nerd in the Universe", Wozniak married Janet Hill, his current spouse.

In July 2021, he made a Cameo video in response to right to repair activist Louis Rossmann, in which he described the issue as something that has "really affected me emotionally", and credited Apple's early breakthroughs to open technology of the 1970s.