Steven Paul Jobs
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Steven Paul Jobs, American computer executive who co-founded Apple Computer,
one of the first manufacturers of personal computers.
Steven Jobs was born in 1956, in San Francisco. He was promptly adopted by Paul Jobs and
his wife, Clara. But when the company for who Paul worked for transferred him to Palo Alto, he
bought a house in Mountain View, part of what was starting to be known as Silicon Valley.
Steven Jobs went to high school in Los Altos, California, and attended lectures at Hewlett-
Packard Co. in Palo Alto after school. He attracted the attention of the company president and
was hired as a summer employee. He worked there with Stephen Wozniak, an electronics inventor.
In 1972, Jobs graduated from high school and entered Reed College, but he dropped out after one
semester. He joined Atari in 1974 as a designer of video games. But after several months, he
quit his job and made a trip to India in search of spiritual enlightenment.
Upon his return to California, Jobs found that Wozniak, who still worked for Hewlett-Packard,
had become involved with a group of young electronics in a computer club. Jobs, who was
interested in marketing, persuaded Wozniak to work with him. Together they designed and built a
prototype of the Apple I, a pre-assembled computer circuit board, in Jobs’s parents’ garage. A
local electronics equipment retailer ordered 25 of the machines. Wozniak later quit his job to
become the vice president in charge of research and development of the new venture. They formed
the Apple Computer Company in April 1976.
The Apple I was offered at a price of $666.66 and sold 600 units, mainly to hobbyists and
electronics enthusiasts. The Apple II followed shortly after, keeping the plainness and small
size of the Apple I, but more suited to the common user. Apple Computer was incorporated in
1977 and became phenomenally successful.
In 1983 Apple introduced the Lisa, a personal computer primarily designed for business use
that incorporated a hand-held mouse to select commands and control an on-screen cursor. The
Lisa was followed by the Macintosh personal computer, aimed at the general user to provide
easy and affordable access to information and computing power.
Throughout the early 1980s Jobs led the company as it developed and sold personal computers,
software, and printers throughout the world. In 1985 poor sales and internal problems at Apple
led to restructuring and to Jobs’s forced resignation from the company. He took five Apple
employees with him and started a new computer company, NeXT, Inc. Jobs acquired capital from
such sources as financier H. Ross Perot; Canon, Inc.; Stanford University; and Carnegie Mellon
University. His new computers were innovative, but expensive. When NeXT computers sold
poorly, Jobs shut down the company’s hardware division to focus on creating software.
In 1986 Jobs purchased the computer division of motion-picture studio Lucas Film Ltd. for
$60 million, incorporating the division as Pixar Animation Studios. Pixar became a leader in
computer animation and in developing software for advanced computer graphics. In 1995 Pixar
completed Toy Story, the first fully computer-generated feature film. In 1996 Apple, seeking
a foundation for its new operating system, bought NeXT for $400 million and made Jobs a
consultant to the company he had founded.
Steven Jobs was awarded the National Medal of Technology by President Reagan in 1985, the
Jefferson Award for Public Service in 1987, and was named Entrepreneur of the Decade in 1989
by Inc. Magazine.
Today, Steven Jobs still lives in Silicon Valley with his wife and three children.
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