Wozniak's life before and after Apple is a "home-brew" mix of brilliant discovery and adventure, as an engineer, a concert promoter, a fifth-grade teacher, a philanthropist, and an irrepressible prankster. But in 1975, a young engineering wizard named Steve Wozniak had an idea: what if you combined computer circuitry with a regular typewriter keyboard and a video screen? The result was the first true personal computer, the Apple I, a widely affordable machine that anyone could understand and figure out how to use. They had cryptic switches, punch cards, and pages of encoded output. The article called them "phone phreaks." These people were able to figure out that by just whistling certain tones into a phone handset, they could make telephone calls within the Bell phone system for free.Essentially, they first would dial an 800 or 555 number, any free exchange, then they would make this tone sound to seize the line.The mastermind behind Apple Computer sheds his low profile and steps forward to tell his story for the first time.īefore cell phones that fit in the palm of your hand and slim laptops that fit snugly into briefcases, computers were like strange, alien vending machines. It basically was a story about how a bunch of technical kids and young engineers around the country had figured out how to crack codes on the phone system. Back then, there were never articles about tech people- really, never-so once I started reading this article, about people like me, I couldn't stop. aph? Well, it was one of those articles, probably because this story was about tech people like me. Wow! You know how some articles just grab you from the first paragr. But as soon as I did, it just grabbed me.
To quickly assess the difficulty of the text, read a short excerpt:Įven though I never usually read this magazine, for some reason I started flipping through it that day.I came upon an article called "Secrets of the Little Blue Box." Those were interesting enough words to make me stop skimming and read that article all the way through.Now, it was labeled as an "incredible story", and I had no idea what a Blue Box was until I started reading the article.
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