Steve Wozniak

He was thinking about electrons.

His father, Jerry, worked at Lockheed on military projects so secret he couldn't mention them at dinner.

But the physics behind them?

That was fair game.

When Steve asked questions, his dad didn't brush him off.

He pulled out a blackboard and started from the beginning.

Wozniak would later write, The way my dad taught me was not to rote memorize how parts are connected to form a gate, but to learn where the electrons flowed to make the gate do its job.

To truly internalize and understand what is going on, not just read some stuff off some blueprint or out of some book.

His dad taught him to see the invisible, to understand not just what electrons did, but why.

Steve's IQ tested over 200.

Everyone knew he was gifted.

But Jerry never pushed.

Steve was in charge of his own learning.

The most important lesson came wrapped in a simple statement.

Engineering, Wozniak's dad told his son, is the highest level of importance you could reach in the world.

Someone who can make electrical devices do something good for people takes society to a new level.

Wozniak absorbed this like gospel.

While other kids had no idea what they wanted to be, Wozniak knew exactly what he wanted to be.

He would be an engineer's engineer, what his dad called a serious engineer.

The neighborhood boys called themselves the electronics kids.