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Wozniak Inducted Into Inventors Hall Of Fame
piggy writes: "Seven inventors, including Steve Wozniak, the inventor of the Apple I and Apple II, were added to the National Inventors Hall of Fame. Yahoo has the article." This is great to hear -- Woz has always been one of my heroes, and it's great to see him recognized for the incredible work he has done for the industry. According to the article, the Hall of Fame was created in 1973 by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office and the National Council of Intellectual Property Attorneys.
Another great inventor, who goes often unnoticed is Bill Lear: invented the car radio, founded the Motorola company; invented the executive jet plane, founded the Gates Lear Jet company. When he died, he was busy designing updated steam cars. Isn't that what they call a "Renaissance Man"?
And what about R. G. LeTorneau? He invented a lot of earth moving machines and founded a company to make them. When he sold his company, the contract stated that he couldn't design earth moving equipment during a ten year period. So, he invented the off-shore oil drilling platform.
You write that he has much better things to do... why? He's not in the business for the money. As I recall, he's teaching computers in a school... here is a real hacker, someone who cares about teaching people... and that's exactly why he deserves to be honored.
Yeah, without Jobs the Apple's would never had been what they are today. But so what? We're not honoring businessmen... it's about innovators, and (hopefully) true devotees to technology... long live the Woz!
-- Is "Sig" copyrighted by www.sig.com?
>designs could be built by 'electronic
>enthusiasts' are you?
The ones in which Woz had a hand in the design can.
Not only that, but when you bought a Woz designed Apple, you got the complete schematics of the MB, complete with part numbers of all the ICs and other components...
Oh... and you also got documented assembler code for all the ROMs as well... AND a built in disassembler in the ROM in case anything got updated but not documented.
ALL of this came with every Apple, AND he freely handed out all of the above to the Homebrew club and anyone else who asked. Basically, you didn't have to buy an Apple from Apple, you could write to them, get the schematics, and build it yourself if you wanted to. Apple just sold the completed box (with the nice plastic case) for anyone eho WASN'T skilled with a soldiering iron.
My dad still has a copy of the Apple ][ schematics that he actually got Woz to autograph at a trade show back when I was like... four or something. He's also promised that I WILL inherit those Apple docs.
It wasn't until the influence of Gasse and Sculley that Apple hardware became closed. Gasse, incidently, for all his public whining about Apple "not releasing the G3 specs to Be", was the one who fought most tenaciously to KEEP APPLE CLOSED and NOT allow clones. By this time, both Steves had been forced out of the company.
john
Resistance is NOT futile!!!
Haiku:
I am not a drone.
Remove the collective if
Imagine all the people...
Among the various "hacks" done to the Comodore Pet, perhaps the most bizzare was connecting three modems to a 64K PET and "timesharing" the computer with a rudimentary operating system. This could support up to 4 simultaneous users (including the console user) and do some of the really cool stuff you could do with timeshared environments (well before the internet was even available to the casual hobbiest). From what I understood, this was all with a "stock" PET, except for perhaps the extra modems.
It had a really strog users community at the time, and some really interesting experiemnts took place on that platform that in some ways seem to have been forgotten.
I don't know what you've got against Woz--you keep
harping on this point over and over.
How do you draw the defining line between
innovation and invention? Hell, the transistor
wasn't anything new--it did the same thing as the
vacuum tube, but in a solid substrate instead of
by boiling off electrons. Nothing inventive there.
Maybe more to the point, tell me who, if not Woz
and co., invented the personal computer.
There were the Amdahls, and the various 'do it
yourself' S-100 machines out there. None of them
were home computers, but rather hobbyists' toys.
It's like comparing a ham radio to an FM tuner.
In my mind, Woz is an inventor, and deserves the
award as much as anyone.
"People who do stupid things with hazardous materials often die." -- Jim Davidson on alt.folklore.urban
Disney (I realize that the fact that his company is the best source for G rated softcore porn isn't his fault but still.)
Not his fault? The guy certainly had some say over the nymphs, fairies, etc. in Fantasia. I've always assumed that Walt was a dirty old man. :-)
"People who do stupid things with hazardous materials often die." -- Jim Davidson on alt.folklore.urban
Here's that wozniac interview.
Why wasn't Chuck Peddle nominated? He invented the 6502 microprocessor, and the Commodore PET, which, IMHO, was equally responsible for "[bringing] together all the elements of the modern personal computer."
The Commodore PET is oft-forgotten, and I hope that some of us remember it. It had a steel case, an internal cassette drive, and a 9" display. It even shipped with 8K of RAM, which was a lot in those days. Chuck Peddle was a god. He later invented the Motorola 68000, as I recall (I may be wrong. Corrections gratefully accepted).
I know, there is some argument whether the Apple II or the PET shipped first, but I vote for the PET. It was shown at a Radio Shack in January of 1977, a full 4 months before the Apple II was first shown at the West Coast Computer Faire.
Put Chuck Peddle in the inventors Hall of Fame! He certainly deserves to be there more than Walt Disney does, who, "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs" aside, certainly has not contributed as much as an inventor (again, IMHO, and I am a huge animation fan).
Neopets - the best free game on the Int
He took an off the shelf microprocessor and put into a board, connected with other off-the-shelf hardware.
Note that at the time this happened, significant advances in computing had already been long made: computers existed with pipelines, caches, virtual memory, and so on. Microprocessors already existed at the time and so did DRAM chips. The technology in the Apple I and II computers paled compared to what had already been achieved.
It's true that Woz *created* the Apple II, and that it was a significant achievement. But to call it an invention is not accurate; an invention is something original, not merely putting together existing components in a way they are actually meant to be put together.
But then considering who instituted this ridiculous Hall of Fame, where is the surprise? If you could fart out the tune of ``Camp Town Races'' with your armpit, they would give you a patent on the technique.
And I suppose the computer you wrote that post on uses toggle switches for input, and stdout is a row of LED's for displaying binary numbers...
Are you trying to insinuate that what makes the Apple II an invention, but the Altair not an invention, is that Wozniak invented the computer keyboard and video display?
Only on Slashdot do you find everyone going on about The Woz, and some lone soul asking, "What about Jobs?" :-)
"The best we can hope for concerning the people at large is that they be properly armed." - Alexander Hamilton
A Woz interview would be an excellent thing... good suggestion.
"The best we can hope for concerning the people at large is that they be properly armed." - Alexander Hamilton
Oh, "inducted", not "indicted".... never mind.
"The hall of fame was created in 1973 by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office and the National Council of Intellectual Property" Attorneys"
Um. Three cheers for Steve, but surely we shouldn't condone "awards" by these guys - it's hardly credible seeming as its not peer reviewed. (Not to take any due reward from Steve - but I don't agree with championing an award given by the very people who STUNT technological development.)
Not hardly. Most of the entrants in the Pro Football and Baseball Halls were inducted while they were alive.
...phil
...phil
"For a list of the ways which technology has failed to improve our quality of life, press 3."
I'm terribly sorry, but I don't remember saying that the Altair was not an invention.
Oh, wait... now that I read my comment again, I see that I never said any such thing.
Try reading more carefully next time.
Woz was the first, or nearly the first, to design and sell a computer system that included a video controller and a keyboard.
Altair users had to hack their own drivers, because the Altair was just a motherboard in a box (and that was only after you assembled it). Standard input was a row of on/off toggles, and standard output was a row of LED's. It was a ground-breaking invention, and if Ed Roberts is not also in the "Hall of Fame", then something is very wrong... but that does not take away from the fact that the Apple II allowed math geeks and software geeks and an endless army of other technophiles to get their hands on their very own computers, something that only hard-core hardware tweakers could do before.
In hindsight, selling a complete computer system instead of a motherboard kit may seem obvious to us, and it may only have been a matter of time before somebody figured it out, but Woz and Jobs actually did it.
What is more, Woz designed a great motherboard, possibly the best ever to be designed by a single person (instead of a team of engineers). He also came up with a great video architecture, which made his computer affordable.
If you really think all he did was stick a keyboard and monitor on an Altair and sell it under a new brand, you clearly have no clue about the history of the Altair, Apple, or personal computers in general. Get thee to the library!
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
It's nice to know that the Woz is going to be formally immortalized in this way, although I'm sure he would live on forever in any case.
Although he has been eclipsed by the iSteve in the public eye, Woz remains the true unsung hero behind the personal computing revolution.
Congratulations Steve!
Akron, OH, downtown near Quaker Square and the University of Akron on Broadway.
"The Apple I was the first low cost computer to come with an alphanumeric keyboard standard. I just couldn't see the waste and effort to build some general techie product that needed a lot more junk to start typing. And until you type, nothing is worth much. I'd been through the other computer paradigm my whole life before. Also, our calculators at HP had meaningful (to humans) keyboards when turned on. I also made the Apple I display on the cheapest device possible, your own home TV. I also wrote the BASIC for it. I only left out floating point after thinking hard in order to have the first BASIC for a 6502 and maybe get a little fame in my club. The Apple ][ was the first to have BASIC in ROM, the first to have DRAMs, expandable hugely on the motherboard, the first to have so few chips, the first to be completely built, the first with a plastic case, the first with color graphics, the first with hi-res, the first with sound, the first with paddles for games, the first to include built-in casette interface, the first to have color and game commands in the BASIC, etc. It was the third ever to look like a typewriter (the Apple I was the first)."
'nuff said, I dare say.
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
I would have to say that the Woz is definately one cool guy. He has led, to say the least, a colorful life. It would be interesting to sit over a few beers with him and talk about his experiences.
Eh...
It's amazing how rich a guy can get just by sending a ball (accurately) through a loop of wire. Does inventing make you richer than that?
Dumb that the yahoo article doesn't have a link. Here it is: http://www.invent.org/index.html Seymour Cray is there, and so is William Burroughs! No, not *that* William Burroughs. (-; Weird that they don't have Eckert or Mockley there. Also the don't have John Von Neuman. In the case of Von Neuman, this no doubt because the invention must be covered by a US patent (as per explaination on web page). This makes sense for Neuman (imagine if he had patented shared memory architectures) but what not with regard to Eckert and Mockley. At least I *think* they had some patent for the Enaic...
Prior to the days of the Apple II, you had to build the damn things yourself, so computers were really only a hobbyist toy until the Apple II.
Pop the hood on one of those things, and you will see plenty of innovations. It was a beautifully simple and efficient motherboard design.
There was a reason why the Apple II sold as fast as they could make them; it was a good product that people wanted.
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
The worst thing about the situation is that Turing couldn't reveal anything about his war-time accomplishments. It was all still declaired secret.
During his trial he couldn't say "Look I'm a national hero, I helped crack German codes." At Virginia Tech I met a fellow who worked with him (and for the life of me can't remember his name, nice English fellow) and he felt that it was terrible that this couldn't be entered during the trials Turing went through. Things like that suck.
"Drug related crime" is a misnomer, "prohibition related crime" is the more accurate and correct phrase.
Not quite. They did sell blue boxes to their college buddies, mostly to show off thier phreaking skills for fun, but they got the money to start Apple Computer from a venture capitalist.
(BTW: If you missed Cringly's "Triumph of the Nerds" special on PBS, go rent it. The interview with Woz contains a very funny story about using a blue box to call the Pope.)
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
Most of us will never be able to put on our job resume "created the first home computer", but there are lessons we can learn from Steve Wozniak.
I think one of the things he has done in recent years that sets the best example for the rest of us is to pass on the knowledge. It's easy to get frustrated at inexperienced computer users, but I have a hard time imagining Woz looking someone in the eye and saying "RTFM". There really isn't much excuse for us to either. If Linux is going to continue it's growth, we have to lighten up a bit.
I see more gifted people involved with Linux than anywhere else presently, but I also see the most abrasive. Slashdot forums are the electronic equivalent of a "tough classroom". There are good questions, usually good answers, and then there are hecklers.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not condeming everyone who has a sense of humor. Write all you want about N*talie P*rtman, Gr*ts, and hyku. But when I see people ask a legitimate question and the response is flame from an AC, that sucks.
It's not what Woz would do.
Where the hell is R. Buckminster Fuller on that list!? One of the most prolific
and imaginary inventors
i assume you meant imaginitive, not imaginary. i'm sure the fuller estate would be glad to prove his existence to you, should you ask to have him exhumed.
- Entertaining Bits from the Ancient Kernel Tree
Well, I for one, quote him....
#include "disclaim.h"
"All the best people in life seem to like LINUX." - Steve Wozniak
#include "disclaim.h"
"All the best people in life seem to like LINUX." - Steve Wozniak
Alan Turing did not kill himself simply "because he was gay". he was never ashamed of his homosexuality. he kiled himself for several reasons. after his security clearance in the U.S. was revoked because homosexuals were considered 'security threats' and he was arrested for having a relationship with another male, he was then forced to undergo humilliating "treatment" for his homosexuality which included hormone injections to reduce his libido. in addition to that the hormone injections that he was forced to take(under threat of arrest and imprisonment) made him loose control of his weight and physical fitness. he died on june 8, 1954 after eating an apple soaked in cyanide.
- "Hear that?! The percolations are imminent! Cease your ingress!"
Check the Ask Slashdot archives, he did an interview a few months ago.
I don't know about the pinball machine but if IIRC, Woz was held the highest score in Gameboy Tetris as listed in several issues of Nintendo Power. When the magazine asked him to stop submitting his scores (it was unfair, no one could come close to beating his score)he continued to submit scores under an alias.
I wouldn't describe Turing as the Father of Computer Science. Maybe Artificial Intelligence. Charles Babbage's 'Thinking Machine' in the dying years of the nineteenth century would earn him the title of Father of Computers (if not CompSci).
Open Source. Closed Minds. We are Slashdot.
---------///----------
--
I like to watch.
(To the script of Apple's Think Different ad)
Here's to the crazy one... the misfit... the rebel... the troublemaker.
The round peg in the square hole.
The one who saw things differently. He isn't fond of rules, and has no respect for the status quo.
You can quote him, disagree with him, glorify, or villify him. About the only thing you can't do, is ignore him, because he changed things. He pushed the human race forward.
And while some may see him as the crazy one, we see genius. Because the person who is crazy enough to think he can change the world is the one who does.
Think Different. Woz.
There definitely should have been a shot of Woz in that commercial... he was one of the people that brought about this revolution. Congrats.
You should never take life too seriously - You'll never get out of it alive.
I tell ya, the guy has some wonderful company in his induction class. It just makes me respect him that much more.
Something that really got me about him was last year when that Pirates of Silicon Valley show was on (or whatever it was called), I sent him an email asking some off the wall question about the Apple I. I figured he would answer it in his FAQ thingy, or one of his assistants would answer it. But no.
To my surprise, within a few hours Woz himself emailed me with a personal answer. That just blew me away. I mean, here is a guy who has a lot better things to do with his time than answer the email of some stupid guy in Missouri, and he spent the five minutes or so to type in a reply. That was cool.
The only other person who has done that was Stephen Fry (of Fry and Laurie).
Some people are just really cool.
Among his comments, he actually said, "look, I'm no computer expert..."
Considering his boasts about bringing about the Internet, something tells be that his campaign won't be putting that on any bumper stickers.
(For the record, Bush is no guru either. We are a long way off from ever seeing a geek President.)
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
I love that guy, and I've never met him personally. He's just so incredibly likable and nice in everything he's ever said in public. Plus, despite the fact that Apple moved away from openness pretty quickly, I'm sure it wasn't Woz's idea. He originally wanted to give all the specs away for free. He was an open-source hardware guru saddled with Steve "Reality Distortion Field" Jobs. Not that that's bad, because if Woz hadn't had Jobs by his side to handle the business end, Apple wouldn't exist today. Unfortunately, businesses need the suits to make money...
But anway, it couldn't have gone to a nicer person. Take RMS for example--love the philosophy, but I'd hate to have a drink with the man. He'd intimidate the hello out of me, correct my use of the term "open source", and not be much fun. But Woz, you just get the feeling, would be a great guy to socialize with and not be intimidating despite his legendary status.
Oops, I'm blubbering. Time to go before I embarass myself and offer him a blow job or something... [kidding...]
"The more corrupt the state, the more numerous the laws."--Tacitus, *The Annals*
To hell with Jim Clark, Marc Andreeson, McNealy and Pierre OmiDyar. Woz was and is the root of the biggest technology revolution since the industrial age.
And he's maintained the same friendly, geeky, let's talk-shop attitude the whole way. Go take a look at http://woz.org/ and tell me if you think Bill or Steve or any of the other big 'revolutionaries' would take such appreciation of their fans and users as The Woz.
Congratulations!
---
icq:2057699
seumas.com
Turing likely isn't there. Neither are Albert Einstein or Isaac Newton.
Yes, but Turing was a Computer Scientist - his theories formed the basis of most of modern computer science. Einstein and Newton's contributions are much, much less relevant to computing.
Being a great theorist does not make you an inventor. (Though Turing did do some hands-on stuff during the war.)
"Did do some hands-on stuff during the war"? Boy, when they come to handing out the prize for Understatement of the Millenium, you'll be right up there with the guy who said "that Hitler, he's not a very nice man".
Turing helped build the Colossus system that cracked the German Enigma codes. This action alone shortened World War II considerably, and may even have won it for Britain and America. He then went on to design and help construct the first digital stored-program computer in the world. This isn't even starting to talk about his major theoretical contributions, which you so casually dismiss.
I know Woz personally, and I have met several of the eminent computer scientist who worked with Turing. I have the greatest respect for Woz, and I'm truly glad he's been inducted, but Turing was a far more important figure in the history of computing even that Steve.
Sailing over the event horizon
A while ago I asked him about the DVD flap. He said the following:
"I truly hope that copyrights be weakened and that we be able to copy freely if not for gain. I've felt this way ever since I had a tape recorder in high school. All this time, every court case has backed the copyright holders, regardless of the media. So some much higher level thinking than the current lawsuits might be needed to have any impact. It's especially complicated by the fact that most of the civilized world treats such things the same way, and we have trade agreements.
In the case of DVD's I have mixed feelings. I sort of feel that 'we' made an agreement, a contract, with the entertainment industry to accept an encryption scheme in order to have movies released in this form. We truly won. Perhaps we have to pay for it. I'll keep my word even if I think that the deal is not fair or right."
Full Text at:http://www.scc.net/~ytrah/woz.html
The Inventor's Hall of Fame.
Doesn't Jobs deserve just as much credit as Woz? The two developed the Apple I and II together, and Jobs is still in the business -- pushing even more revolutionary products out the door. Food for thought...
You mean they didn't honor Al Gore for inventing the internet?
Click here for the WozCam
Hail Steve Wozniak
Father of the home PC
Resourceful and wise
he died on june 8, 1954 after eating an apple soaked in cyanide.
Which was frankly a disgraceful way to treat someone who had more to do with defeating the Nazis than any other single person.
And then some AC dipshits come along with dipshit comments about it. Pshaw, I spit on them, they weren't fit to lick his boots.
Nikola Tesla
Orville Wright
Wilbur Wright
Samuel F. B. Morse
William D. Coolidge
Interesting to see Marconi inducted the same year as Tesla :)
I/O Error G-17: Aborting Installation
The Inventor's Hall of Fame can be found here.
From the page: Inventors selected for induction are honored annually at a ceremony held in Akron, Ohio.
Is Woz going to be there?
Alan Turing is not in the Inventors Hall of Fame, and yes, the Hall of Fame houses international inventors of repute--not just Americans. The web page is at http://www.invent.org. The front page has a link that allows you to nominate people. Why don't you go nominate Alan Turing? :)
The entire list of inventors at Inventure Place is at http://www.invent.org/book/bo ok-text/indexbyname.html. If you ever happen to pass through Akron, Ohio, I suggest you stop in there. It's got a load of cool hands-on exhibits, mainly aimed at kids but still fun for geeks.