Steve Wozniak Honors Innovative Inventors

DigitalDame2 writes "Steve Wozniak, co-inventor of the Apple personal computer (along with Steve Jobs), hosted the first annual Modern Marvels Invent Now Challenge. Wozniak's favorite invention is one that shows where to clip your dog's claws without injuring the dog. The Strawjet, a creation that weaves straw left over from a harvest into building materials, won the grand prize."

Comments

Co-inventor???

[isecore]

Steve Wozniak, co-inventor of the Apple personal computer (along with Steve Jobs)

Err, as far as I know Woz made the computer, and Jobs decided he would market it. I'm having a very hard time imagining Jobs getting down and dirty with a soldering iron, since he's more of a talker and Woz is the guy who invented a computer just for the hell of it.

Co-founder of Apple Computer Inc. would've been more like it.

Re:Co-inventor???

[datafr0g]

Yep, I think the confusion comes from the fact that they were co-founders of the company Apple (with Ronald Wayne), I think it would be a long stretch to say they were co-inventors of the computer itself.

Re:Co-inventor???

[cpt kangarooski]

Where the hell did you get your information from? Did you put it together from what you read on the back of cereal boxes?

Jobs and Woz were introduced by Bill Fernandez, a mutual friend. Jobs was still in high school at the time. Jobs never worked at HP. He went to college, had some odd jobs, went to India, worked at Atari for a little while (and would bring in Woz to give him a hand), and eventually they started Apple.

Jobs didn't design a thing about the Apple I. He certainly got to hear all about it -- they talked a lot -- but it was all Woz. Pretty much the same for the Apple II and Disk II controller, though he was taking some requests at that time (e.g. 'make a floppy drive work on the Apple II in time for the next trade show'). And that was largely it. Woz assisted on some other projects, and did some of his own things apart from Apple, but those are his three triumphs, and he basically did them single-handedly. Plus he wrote a lot of the key software as well, so the hardware was fine-tuned for running the software, and vice-versa. Those machines would not have been nearly as great as they were if more than one person had been making them.

Skip the spam

[Anonymous Coward]

here is the real link without any of the middlemen leeching pageviews off a 100 word summary and 100 adverts per page (and they wonder why people block adverts)

http://www.historychannel.com/invent/?page=winner_ ward

Strawjet website.

[technoextreme]

Here is the webstie for the strawjet invention actually one the contest. http://www.greeninventor.org/index.shtml I have to say this is one ingenious idea for third world countries to make cheap housing. You grow your food and whatever waste you produce is used to produce houses.

Re:Strawjet website.

[Anonymous Coward]

And here is the page on the History Channel's website about the invention for cutting dogs' toenails. A story about it is here. No website yet.

Re:Bah, mine's better

[SteveWoz]

Actually, I expressed the idea that it was my personal favorite because I am a great dog lover (contribute lots to rescue and care for pets) and an easy to use invention like this means a lot if it saves the dogs pain. it's a very simple idea using paper hat changes color with temperature.

I spent a full 3 hours talking with all 25 semifinalists in depth. It meant a lot to them. There were some very good inventions there and some that may revolutionize industries. A robot that builds a house in a day may offer homebuilding at 1/5 the cost, for example. Only about 2 of the devices really used electronics. Most of the inductees in the Invertors Hall of Fame have invented things outside of what we computer types consider. Still, the members of this Hall and the inventors of this contest share a similar personality and similar stories. It was one of the best times of my life to talk to such inventors before they have money or greed, and to hear their stories.

One finalist was a simple laser and light addition to a nutdriver. The inventor came up with a desire to achieve this solution when she was 9 years old and her father needed for her to hold a flashlight. One man invented a remote control on the reins of a horse to steer and stop it remotely. He's a real strong cowboy type, fun to talk to. He may not be a technical genious, but like many of us worked hard to achieve a device that was his passion to create. I spoke with the neice of the winning inventor and she told how for 9 years, back to when she was 14 years old, he talked about wanting to develop this building material made of wasted straw.

As a judge I had read descriptions of the various inventions. I had also seen the 25 semifinalist exhibits on display in Los Angelas, the first city a tour of those exhibits hit. But you get a more complete picture of an invention being a combination of a device and a person. This is true of such inventions that come out of want and passion and lack of money, instead of out of well funded company projects.

These are not the sort of people to criticize or challenge. They were all so incredibly wonderful. Did anyone at all who is contributing to this Slashdot item even attend the day-long exhibition or awards ceremony in Grand Central Station on Tuesday? The winners werr culled from 3400 invertion submissions. Even the ones that got passed over may have been greater ones. Any of them could have been given the grand award. We will see many of these devices in our own lives.

When this project started I had 2 choices. I could take a [presumably] high paid job to judge on American Inventor, or whatever that reality TV show was named. The producers said I'd have to be like a Simon Cowell type and criticize the inventors. Or I could do this voluntary judging for the National Inventors Hall of Fame (non-profit) and the History Channel. I took the high integrity one.

Also, when it comes to the start of Apple, I did not just get dirty with a soldering iron. I conceived and created every bit of the hardware and software of the early Apple products. I wasn't asked to go into the lab and design it. The design came first and the company was an afterthought and not something that I even pursued myself.