Steve Wozniak

The lesson he wrote down, the most important thing is that you've done the learning on your own to figure out how to do it.

He was still proud of it, but for him, it's the engineering, not the glory, that's really important.

The famous physicist Richard Feynman said something similar.

I don't like honors.

I've already got the prize.

The prize is the pleasure of finding the thing out.

The kick in the discovery, the observation that other people use it.

Those are the real things.

By eighth grade, Wozniak built what he called his masterpiece, the Adder Subtractor.

It was the closest thing to a computer he'd ever designed, capable of adding and subtracting numbers up to 1,023 using binary.

The machine used over 100 transistors, 200 diodes, and 200 resistors, all mounted on a one-foot plastic square.

This time, nothing blew up.

At the Bay Area Science Fair, the judges initially gave it only an honorable mention, but when he explained how it worked, everything changed.

The Air Force ended up giving their highest award for electronics to an 8th grader competing against 12th graders.

They even flew him to Travis Air Force Base as a prize.

But Wozniak would later write that his greatest achievement wasn't winning the award, it was developing the patience that engineering requires.

Listen to what he writes here.

Thanks to all those science projects, I acquired a central ability that was to help me through my entire career.

Patience.

I'm serious.