STEVE JOBS-HISTORY
Steve Jobs was born on February 24, 1955, to two University of Wisconsin graduate students who gave him up for adoption. Smart but directionless, Jobs experimented with different pursuits before starting Apple Computers with Steve Wozniak in 1976. Apple's revolutionary products, which include the iPod, iPhone and iPad, are now seen as dictating the evolution of modern technology.
Steven Paul Jobs was born on February 24, 1955, to
Joanne Scheele (later Joanne Simpson) and Abdul Fattah "John" Jindal,
two University of Wisconsin graduate students who gave their unnamed son up for
adoption. His father, Abdul Fattah Jindal, was a Syrian political science
professor and his mother, Joanne Schiller worked as a speech
therapist. Shortly after Steve was placed for adoption, his biological parents
married and had another child, Mona Simpson. It was not until Jobs was 27 that
he was able to uncover information on his biological parents.As an infant, Steven was adopted by Clara and Paul
Jobs and named Steven Paul Jobs. Clara worked as an accountant and Paul was a
Coast Guard veteran and machinist. The family lived in Mountain View within
California's Silicon Valley. As a boy, Jobs and his father would work on
electronics in the family garage. Paul would show his son how to take apart and
reconstruct electronics, a hobby which instilled confidence, tenacity and
mechanical prowess in young Jobs.While Jobs has always been an intelligent and
innovative thinker, his youth was riddled with frustrations over formal
schooling. A prankster in elementary school, Jobs's fourth-grade teacher needed
to bribe him to study. Jobs tested so well, however, that administrators wanted
to skip him ahead to high school—a proposal that his parents declined.Not long
after Jobs did enroll at Homestead High School (1971), he was introduced to his
future partner,Steve Wozniak, through a friend of Wozniak's. Wozniak was
attending the University of Michigan at the time. In a 2007 interview with ABC News, Wozniak spoke
about why he and Jobs clicked so well: "We both loved electronics and the
way we used to hook up digital chips," Wozniak said. "Very few
people, especially back then had any idea what chips were, how they worked and
what they could do. I had designed many computers so I was way ahead of him in
electronics and computer design, but we still had common interests. We both had
pretty much sort of an independent attitude about things in the world. ..."
Apple Computers
After high school, Jobs enrolled at Reed College in Portland, Oregon. Lacking direction, he dropped out of college after six months and spent the next 18 months dropping in on creative classes. Jobs later recounted how one course in calligraphy developed his love of typography. In 1974, Jobs took a position as a video game designer with Atari. Several months later he left Atari to find spiritual enlightenment in India, traveling the continent and experimenting with psychedelic drugs
