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Wozniak Inducted Into Inventors Hall Of Fame 153

Posted by emmett from the super-breakout dept.
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.
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Wozniak Inducted into the National Inventors Hall Of Fame More

Wozniak Inducted into the National Inventors Hall Of Fame

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  • I have two books written by Clive Sinclair. One is "Coil Design and Construction Manual". The second is "Tested Short Wave Receiver Circuits Using Microalloy Transistors". He invented those microally transistors, built a company to make them, and wrote a book telling people what to do with them. Great Man.

    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.

  • Re:Congrats to The Woz (Score:3)

    by mikeage ( 119105 ) <.slashdot. .at. .mikeage.net.> on Thursday June 15, 2000 @05:56PM (#998754) Homepage
    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!
  • >>Will we see Jeff Bezos and Amazon inducted into the hall in 2060 for patents which changed the way the web worked? ;-)

    Even in the hyperspeed economy of today, it takes a little while for it to become clear exactly who is *worthy* of an award, and who was just a sham.

  • Go to the Fry's at the corner of Central Expressway and Lawrence Expressway in Sunnyvale. There is one hiding in a plexiglass bubble in the book section, kinda forgotten...

  • >You aren't seriously going to claim Apple's
    >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

  • 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.
  • Think different? Look the same?
  • First of all, Congrats to Woz, for a much deserved honor.

    If you want to see his comments on this, you can check it out on his website here. [woz.org]

  • He did that for me too! I was so shocked I could hardly focus on the monitor for about an hour!

    I honored him in my own special way by making a "Woz" folder in my e-mail client as well as a mail filter rule.. Just in case he ever sends me anything again. :-)

    l8r
    Sean

  • Fooled me. But then, I was driving. :)

    Thanks.

    --Ben
  • 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.

  • 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. :-)

  • Bill Gates, that's who. That's an inventors' hall of fame, Bill. You can't get in there, 'cause you're an "innovator" remember? :-)
  • If the football hall of fame can be in Canton Ohio, which is even smaller, then why not Akron, which, if you follow me, is bigger...

  • "I truly hope that copyrights be weakened and that we be able to copy freely if not for gain."

    Are you sure Woz be sayin' this, or do you be tryin' to pull one over on us?

  • 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).
  • I happen to live in Akron. Maybe I'll use this as an excuse to visit the Inventors' Hall of Fame for the very first time. I've always wondered what it was like in there.
  • does slashdot have a big enough name for Woz to visit the geek complex and do a personal interview and the locals could stop by and pay respects to our god? (please please please please please!)
  • I am happy that he is being reconized as the one who started it all. He is truely the one who started it all.
  • One Click Shopping is a better invention than the crummy ol' Apple ][.
  • 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.
  • ...my guess is that it's because of Akron's history with rubber. Akron is, or at least was, to rubber what Detroit is to automobiles. From what I understand, the local rubber research has expanded (as rubber will do) to include polymers in general.

    I don't know the whole story, though, which is a darn shame because I live less than a mile away, on the same street as the Hall...
  • The first Apple was a direct ripoff of the Altair. There was nothing innovative about the Apple.

    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?" :-)
  • A Woz interview would be an excellent thing... good suggestion.
  • Didn't he sign some of the Apple IIGS series?

  • What an outrage!!! (Score:4)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 15, 2000 @05:25PM (#998780)
    The Woz, inducted? For what? I don't care what evidence anyone says they have on him, I'm sure Woz will be found innocent.

    Oh, "inducted", not "indicted".... never mind.

  • And of course it would have rubber keys...;-)

  • That sounds exactly right. Now I go buy one.
    Mojo the dart throwing monkey says I can leave work now.
    Have a great weekend fellow /.er.

  • I thought "Hall of Fames" were only tributes for dead people.
  • Sure your Linus...
  • "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
  • Are you trying to insinuate that what makes the Apple II an invention, but the Altair not an invention...

    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!

  • Late Jay Miner should have had one of these thingies too, or maybe David Haynie.

    At least they made a computer that was close to revolutionary... Not a freakin colorless mac...

  • No (Score:1)

    by 1337d00d ( 177978 )
    The Inventors Hall of Fame can have living people in it, too, although it's been playing catchup because it only started in 1973, so most of the members are dead. Woz and Helen Free are the only two living members of the Hall of Fame.
  • 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!

  • Yes, lets all hail Linus for inventing Unix 25+ years ago when he worked at Bell Labs!

    And without RMS, the original Univacs and the projected 6 IBM's built to serve the worlds computing needs.
  • Is Alan Turing in the Inventors Hall of Fame? He is the Father of Computer Science! I didn't use the Apple I or II, but if Wozniak is there Turing should be there.

    Does anyone know if this Hall of Fame is only for US inventors? Or for inventors who patented their inventions in the US Patents office? If this is the case, they should put Bezos in there for their incredible(sic) 1-Click buying patent. jajaja

    --

  • 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).

    Actually it was the 6800. He developed the 6800 even before the 6502. He (and his partners) planned to do a low cost CPU which was bus-compatible to the 6800 called 6500. Appearantly Motorola sued the sucessfully and they had to change the bus a little and called the CPU 6502.

  • heh, no It just seems to always be that way. Considering it is only 27 years old, It had to play catch up. Also.. There are many people in the rock and roll hall of fame that are still alive. Well... they still have a heart beat anyway :P
  • I do have to say, of all the people in the computer industry Steve Wozniak it probably one of the coolest, not just in the geek sphere, but as a good person. After all his success with Apple he has ended up back teaching youngsters about his passion of computers. I remember seeing him in an interview talking about how he was sharing part of his profits from Apple with employees that had gotten the short end of the stick.

    It's nice to see him getting some recognition. Linus (#2 on my list of cool geeks) has a popular OS named after him and thousands of devoted followers, nice to see some coming to Woz too.
  • Akron, OH, downtown near Quaker Square and the University of Akron on Broadway.
  • If everyone was like Woz, the world would be a better place.
  • I've been there a few times (I'm from Cuyahoga Falls). You go past a bunch of plaques with descriptions of the members, which interests some and bores others (they interest me). In the basement is an hands on area with a variety of exhibits to encourage people's creativity. It is well worth a trip.
  • Also being inducted are Alfred and Helen Free, who produced an easy self-test for use by diabetics in the late 1950s. Helen Free and Wozniak are the only two living honorees.

    I guess I'm just rambling here, but isn't it better to honor people while they're still living? I think that we should lavish honor on people while they're still alive, instead waiting for them to die and then holding elaborate ceremonies.

    I'm not saying that's what happened here, and of course there was a delay while these peoples' inventions became commonplace in the marketplace, but how much more "honorable" would it have been to have inducted these people into the hall of fame while they were still alive to appreciate it.
    --

  • Of course Woz himself can put it much better than I can, so here it is from the man himself (cut&pasted from his web page):

    "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.

  • As stated, this is the Inventor's Hall of Fame. I sure am happy for Woz. He really was the brains and effort behind so much of the PC revolution, and never got much credit--and never seemed to mind which makes him even more deserving in my book. Anyway, on his site (http://www.woz.org/), he had some comments about this and more-among them, that he hopes this will lead to more engineers getting credit for their creations. A good thought where especially the last 15-20 years, we know everything about the people who ran the companies and made millions but hear very little of the engineers, programmers and designers who did the work.
  • Comment removed based on user account deletion
    • Gates personally wrote most (all?) the code in the TRS-80 Model 100, which is definitely one of the coolest portable computers of all time. I have a Model 100 waiting for me to buy it back from a friend I sold it to. It's a really, really cool machine.
    I never had a 100, but I used to have a Model 200 with an external floppy drive. Cool machine, but I didn't have it for long...
    _______
    Scott Jones
    Newscast Director / ABC19 WKPT
    Commodore 64 Democoder
  • 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.
  • Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • Without Amazon, we would never have been able to do anything with one mouse click!
  • Seymour Cray is there, and so is William Burroughs! No, not *that* William Burroughs. (-;

    The two Burroughs are related -- tha inventor is the great-grandfather (or is it grandfather?) of the writer.

    For some reason, the world made more sense to me when I learned that.


    --------------------
    WWW.TETSUJIN.ORG [tetsujin.org]
  • A new mantra for Linux missionaries?

    WWWD?
    --------------------
    WWW.TETSUJIN.ORG [tetsujin.org]
  • Interesting to see Marconi inducted the same year as Tesla :)

    Yowza, that must have been an awkwards award ceremony.

    Though it they both did a dueling duet for accepting the award for inventing the radio it would have been cute.

    George

  • Where the hell is R. Buckminster Fuller on that list!? One of the most prolific and imaginary inventors of the century and a complete and total nerd. "Home, Home, on Lagrange..."

  • Maybe, but "they" would be wrong. A renaissance man would know how to do more than one thing. If he also wrote good poetry, gave rousing speeches and played a mean game of Yahtzee, then maybe he'd be a reanaissance man.

    You are a language teacher, aren't you? There's much more diversity between inventing car radios and jet planes than between writing poetry and giving rousing speeches. Poetry and speeches are both wordplay, while radios are electronic and jet planes are mechanical.

  • ... I still think Woz kicks serious ass. Like people before me have said, if everyone was like Woz, the world would be a better place. Long Live Woz!
  • Believe it or not, I e-mailed Steve Jobs a few weeks ago. To my surprise I had a personal reply from him in under 12 hours.

    Sure, he is not Woz, but I am sure his schedule is even busier.

  • Helen Free and Wozniak are the only two living honorees.

    Evidently they chose to honor him with the distinction of being prematurely dead. --------

    Ever get the impression that your life would make a good sitcom?
    Ever follow this to its logical conclusion: that your life is a sitcom?
  • Read the comments on his front page [woz.org] as he introduces MacSlash [macslash.com]
  • Sure he may have been a legendary garage hacker, but everything they built in that garage was done before on some other system or another.. Like how Microsoft glued their OS from 10 others out there.

    The guy was an INNOVATOR. *NOT* an inventor. If we were to say he was an inventor, that's like saying Bill Gates invented the OS!

  • 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?
  • Actually, back not too long ago, putting those w's would have gotten you a host not found error. Taco changed that, despite his peave againt the www thing. Notice that the hole http://slashdot.org thing doesn't work with the www in it. Say it like http:///..org :o)

    Get it yet?
  • 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...
  • What about some other badasses? Like Seymore(sp?) Cray. Or Kernigan and Ritche? Much better than Disney (I realize that the fact that his company is the best source for G rated softcore porn isn't his fault but still.)
  • This should be a clue.

    The National Inventors Hall of Fame was established in 1973 by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office and the National Council of
    Intellectual Property Law Associations.

    This is a US hall of fame. I don't think that they make claims that this is all inclusive. Hmmm, what does National mean?

  • So, we are just dying to know...
    WHAT WAS THE QUESTION??


    You should never, never doubt what nobody is sure about.
  • Woz has been one of my heros ever since I got hooked on the Apple back when the Apple II was new. I checked out his web page [woz.org] and saw a link to another one of my heros from that era. John Draper, aka Captain Crunch, worked with Woz off and on. John designed the first modem for the apple. He had to redo it because Woz thought there might be some legal problems with the blue box built into it. Woz hosts Capn' Crunch's web site here [webcrunchers.com]. The thing I think is really cool is another hero of mine is John's roommate, Richard Cheshire, aka Cheshire Catalyst, one of the early phone phreaks and editor of TAP magazine. Chesh. has his web page here [digital.net].

  • a copy of Choplifter or Evolution

    Yep, still got the original disks. Problem is: How do I read them with my PC-drive to get them on the net?
    Any idea? Suggestions? Tools? Anyone?


    ---
    Free ?! Does that mean I can't get a Discount ?!
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  • The Apple I was a cheap alternative to other hobby computers like the Altair, but the Apple II was a big deal. Woz & Jobs brought the first "personal computer" to the market by assembling a complete system that anybody could buy and use.

    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.

  • Which was frankly a disgraceful way to treat someone who had more to do with defeating the Nazis than any other single person.

    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.

  • Re:Woz and Morals (Score:3)

    by Golias ( 176380 ) on Friday June 16, 2000 @05:36AM (#998845)
    The two Steves got the money to start Apple Computer by selling stolen long-distance time.

    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.)

  • Following his example... (Score:3)

    by Picass0 ( 147474 ) on Friday June 16, 2000 @05:44AM (#998847) Homepage Journal
    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.

  • Well, I for one, quote him....

    #include "disclaim.h"
    "All the best people in life seem to like LINUX." - Steve Wozniak

  • Re:Turing was gay (and braver than you i'd wager) (Score:3)

    by deglr6328 ( 150198 ) on Thursday June 15, 2000 @07:09PM (#998852)
    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.

  • Woz: king of Tetris (Score:5)

    by hppydude ( 188579 ) on Thursday June 15, 2000 @07:14PM (#998854)
    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).
  • I have a copy of it. Here is the original e-mail:
    Subject: A question about the Apple I

    Dear Mr. Woz,
    I am an elite Linux hacker. Does the Apple I support Linux? If not, you should consider helping port Linux to it, or no one will take your product seriously.

    Thanks,
    Randy Rathbun

    And here is Woz's reply:
    Subject: MAILER-DAEMON: failure notice

    Microsoft Exchange Server: ERROR 029138D76
    Could not deliver message to "wox@woz.org": user does not exist. Please contact the site administrator for assistance.

    >>Dear Mr. Woz,
    >>I am an elite Linux hacker. Does
    >>the Apple I support Linux? If not, you should
    >>consider helping port Linux to it, or no one
    >>will take your product seriously.

    >>Thanks,
    >>Randy Rathbun


    ---------///----------

  • No one deserves it more... (Score:5)

    by Shaheen ( 313 ) on Thursday June 15, 2000 @05:34PM (#998862) Homepage
    (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.

  • 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.

  • The other day, Gore was answering questions about the White House e-mail scandal... specifically why the back-up tapes were not recovered.

    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.)

  • Woz is the nicest damned person around... (Score:4)

    by Sir_Winston ( 107378 ) on Thursday June 15, 2000 @05:35PM (#998868)
    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...]
  • Only time I've ever touched an Apple in my life was back in grade school when monitors were green monochrome and Math Cruncher was the killer-app -- but I've always really dug the Woz.

    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/ [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.

  • Woz and Morals (Score:5)

    by Kagato ( 116051 ) on Thursday June 15, 2000 @05:38PM (#998884)
    I think Woz is probally a rare person in the world in terms of someone who has great ideas and actually made money at it without selling his soul.

    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 [scc.net]

  • Here (Score:4)

    by 1337d00d ( 177978 ) on Thursday June 15, 2000 @05:40PM (#998885)
    The Inventor's Hall of Fame [invent.org].
  • 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...

  • Major oversight?..... (Score:5)

    by dzogchen ( 200579 ) on Thursday June 15, 2000 @05:42PM (#998889)
    You mean they didn't honor Al Gore for inventing the internet?

  • Re:Wanna see him? (Score:3)

    by Loge ( 83167 ) on Thursday June 15, 2000 @05:44PM (#998890)
    Click here for the WozCam [woz.org]

  • Haiku (Score:3)

    by 575 ( 195442 ) on Thursday June 15, 2000 @09:24PM (#998895) Journal
    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.

  • 1975
    • Guglielmo Marconi
      Nikola Tesla
      Orville Wright
      Wilbur Wright
      Samuel F. B. Morse
      William D. Coolidge

    Interesting to see Marconi inducted the same year as Tesla :)

  • The Inventor's Hall of Fame can be found here [invent.org].

    From the page: Inventors selected for induction are honored annually at a ceremony held in Akron, Ohio.

    Is Woz going to be there?

  • Re:Woz is the nicest damned person around... (Score:3)

    by Seumas ( 6865 ) on Thursday June 15, 2000 @05:49PM (#998903)
    I agree. And I have to say that I'm glad he is one of the great people who isn't going to ever be forgotten.

    There are great people in the industry who have accomplished amazing things, but they'll fade away in time. A handfull will forever stand out. Woz is one of those. And when your grand-kids see a picture of him, next to the goofy suits like Gates and Jobs and the rest, he will stand out as the dude who looks like he just spent the afternoon kicking a pin-ball machine's ass and plans to spend the evening having a beer with some good friends, followed by a little coding.

    I think that what sums up how people feel about him is that he is one of us. Not only that, but he makes no presumptions to be anything else. Can you ever see this guy pulling a "Do you know who *I* am?"?

    I'm certain he reads Slashdot (or will read it this time!) and I would really enjoy seeing him sit down with us and be our guest interview one of these days. I think that would put smiles on many of our faces, no? :)
    ---
    icq:2057699
    seumas.com

  • Nope (Score:3)

    by BurntHombre ( 68174 ) on Thursday June 15, 2000 @05:50PM (#998905)
    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 [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 [invent.org]. 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.

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