Just the other day I heard an interview with Steve Wozniak on a National Public Radio Science Friday broadcast. He and Steve Jobs were the two Steves that innocently slipped that tiny wedge under civilization around thirty years ago, and with a sturdy heave turned it on its side. That wedge was the Apple II.

The Woz, as he is known amongst his admirers (perhaps in tangential reference to The Wizard of Oz), spoke of his early days when he was a member of a computer club that played with all sorts of odd scraps of electrical equipment oriented towards assembling some simple machine that could compute.

Those were mainframe days, where computers resembled large American-type refrigerators and data memories were comprised of business envelope sized stacks of thin cardboard punctured with lines of small square holes. Magnetic memories were large reels of tape about 40 centimeters in diameter. The tape was passed through readout heads so that the marching nulls and ones could be recognized and calibrated into some kind of data. The huge machines stood in rows on grating floors to permit the passages of cables and to allow removal of all dust and to maintain a steady favorable temperature.

Before Wozniak’s Apple I, the embryonic tiny computers that hobbyists assembled were metal cases fitted with switches and little lights to control inputs and get some readout as to what was rumbling in the electronic guts. Wozniak set his machine with a keyboard and a cathode ray tube to provide input and output, somewhat commensurate with what is commonplace today. Sure enough, he worked out of his garage coordinating odd bits and pieces of technical equipment from other sources, just like many other pioneers at the cutting edge of technical development.

As a lark, the two Steves put together these baby computers and found they had a real market. In practically no time, under the contemptuous eyes of IBM, who were sure these little computers were only for technological wackos with no future, i.e. what we know today as personal computing, took off. The Apple II soon appeared and, simultaneously, wherever they become available, users groups, fiercely loyal to Apple, sprang into being.

Back in 1968, a reckless driver in Israel struck my three-year-old son and turned him into a cyborg, dependent on a respirator to breathe for the rest of his life. Although the damage disconnected everything below his neck, his bright active mind remained better than ever and, after several years devising all sorts of ways for him to grapple with the world, the computer looked like something he could use. I appealed to Finnish IBM to let him use a terminal, but they turned us down. In 1978, Apple II looked like a way out and it was a smashing success from day one.

I separated the keyboard with help from an engineer from Comico Oy, the Finnish agent for Apple. Set up before his face, my son used a stick in his mouth and was soon punching out simple programs in BASIC. He quickly became closely associated with the local user’s group with regular meetings to discuss problems and prospects, plus a regular newsletter. I became adept at fitting new cards into his motherboard and plugging new chips when that became necessary.

When the Apple II G came out, I constructed a steel framework on wheels to hold the computer, the keyboard, the monitor, printer, a supplementary power supply and extra controls for him to use paddles (this was pre-mouse days) and turn on and off the auxiliary equipment. A documentary of his activities gave him some notoriety on television, which prompted a gift to get him onto the internet…and that changed his life completely.

He was soon in contact with the whole world playing in tournaments in the Japanese game Go, discussing evolutionary biology with academics, who assumed by his expertise he was one of them, and doing what the world is doing today on the web.

So, I am enormously grateful for the gift that Steve Wozniac gave my son and I am very, very happy he had a garage.