Steve Wozniak

He and his friend Alan Baum walked in the wrong building looking for data general, but found themselves at a company called Tenet.

They were hiring.

Steve and Alan applied on the spot.

At Tenet, Steve mentioned his years of paper designs to an executive, lamenting that he couldn't afford the parts to build them.

The man's response changed everything.

I can get you the parts.

Finally, after years of paper design, Steve could build something real.

But he couldn't ask for hundreds of components.

There was a limit to free samples.

So he gave himself a constraint, 20 chips.

Most computers use hundreds.

Wozniak teamed up with Bill Fernandez, who lived down the block.

They worked in Bill's garage, taking breaks to ride their bikes for cream soda.

That's how it got its name, the Cream Soda Computer.

It was revolutionary in its minimalism.

No screen or keyboard.

Those didn't exist yet.

Just a tiny circuit board with flashing lights.

You'd punch a program into a card, slide it in, and read the answer from the blinking lights.

But it had something special.