The Brains Behind the Operations: Tech Nerds, Before They Were Stars!
You're using one now to click through this gallery, but did you ever wonder about the history of the computer? Or the iPod, or Twitter? Snakkle looks back at some of America's most influential tech nerds—spitball targets who became business magnates. Remember, bullies, one day those nerds will run the world! By Brittany CarsonPictured here as a junior at Homestead High School in Cupertino, California, Steve Jobs went on to father the iconic company Apple with Steve Wozniak. The two met when Jobs was 16 and Wozniak 21. Jobs convinced Wozniak to sell personal possessions (ranging from a scientific computer to Jobs’s Volkswagen van) to raise money to build and sell circuit boards and start a business. In 1976, Wozniak invented the Apple I computer, and by 1984, Apple employee Jef Raskin had invented the Macintosh personal computer, which revolutionized the industry (as shown in this iconic TV commercial). Jobs’s marketing prowess and creative foresight made him one of the most influential nerds of our time, but sadly he passed away on October 5, 2011, from pancreatic cancer.
Did you know: Jobs loved calligraphy (almost to the point of obsession) and studied it at Reed College. He revealed that the Mac “was the first computer with beautiful typography. If I had never dropped in on that single course in college, the Mac would have never had multiple typefaces or proportionally spaced fonts.”