That was it—making lights flash on command was the only thing that the Altair 8800 could do. And yet it was so dazzling and so powerful a machine for its time that it not only inspired the founding of the Homebrew Computer Club, it also inspired a Harvard student named Bill Gates to drop out of college and form a business with his friend Paul Allen—a company they named Micro-Soft—to create a programming language for the machine.
THINKING SMALL
Wozniak, an engineer at Hewlett-Packard’s calculator division, wanted to design a home computer that could do more than the Altair 8800. There were computers at the time that were capable of performing much more powerful operations, but they were enormous machines that took up entire rooms and cost so much money that only universities, large corporations, and government agencies could afford them. Some of these big computers could be accessed remotely over telephone lines, using a video terminal—a video monitor and keyboard that connected to the computer using a dial-up modem.
Wozniak thought that the newest microprocessor chips were powerful enough to enable video terminals to have small computer brains of their own, so that they wouldn’t need to connect to big computers far away. He decided to try to build one: Working in his Hewlett-Packard cubicle at night and on weekends, Wozniak designed and built a computer that had a keyboard, an ordinary TV for a video display (he thought computer monitors were too expensive), and a whopping 8 kb of memory. He also wrote the software that made the computer work.
Meditate on this: For his hobby, the Dalai Lama likes to repair watches.
On Sunday, June 29, 1975, Wozniak finished the computer and started it up. He typed a character, and it appeared on the screen! That’s something we take for granted today, but Wozniak’s machine was the very first “personal computer”—as they would soon be known—capable of such a feat. Wozniak didn’t know it at the time, but with that single keystroke, he had brought the era of toggle switches and flashing lights to a close. The personal computer revolution had begun.
A COMPANY IS BORN
Wozniak had designed his computer simply for the fun of the challenge. He planned to print up the plans and give them away at meetings of the Homebrew Computer Club, so that the members could build their own computers. It did not occur to him that money could be made from his invention—that was where Steve Jobs came in.
Jobs thought they could make circuit boards pre-printed with Wozniak’s design, almost like a paint-by-numbers kit, so that hobbyists would know where to install each component. He figured he could sell the circuit boards to members of the Homebrew Club for $50 apiece. So when Wozniak and Jobs decided to form a company in 1976, that was all they set out to make: pre-printed circuit boards.
NOT FAR FROM THE TREE
To raise the money, they needed to launch their company and print the first batch of circuit boards. Jobs sold his Volkswagen van for $1,500 and Wozniak sold his programmable calculator for $250. Next they needed a name for their company, and tried out techie-sounding ones like “Executek” and “Matrix Electronics.” Jobs was on an all-fruit diet at the time (which proved no better that his old vegetarian diet at controlling body odor), and had recently returned from an Oregon commune, where he’d pruned some Gravenstein apple trees. He suggested “Apple Computer.” That sounded better than anything else they could think of, and it came before Atari in the phone book, so Apple it was.
Careful! If you’re punched in the chest during a bout of the hiccups, you can die.
APPLES AND ORANGES
It was probably inevitable that Wozniak, who created things for fun and liked to give them away, would clash with Jobs, who wanted to build a business by selling things for profit. The two had their first big disagreement when Wozniak balked at giving Apple Computer the exclusive rights to his invention; he wanted to give his plans away free to Homebrew members who didn’t buy the circuit boards. And since he’d built the computer at his Hewlett-Packard workbench after hours, he felt that HP also had a claim to the technology.
Jobs, on the other hand, was convinced that Wozniak’s computer was the heart of Apple’s business, and without the exclusive use of that technology the company would have no value. He shared his concerns with Ron Wayne, his friend at Atari, and Wayne agreed.
MR. 10 PERCENT
Wayne offered to have the pair over to his apartment, where he would try to convince Wozniak that Apple needed the exclusive rights to his design. It took about two hours to do it, but by the time Wayne was finished, Wozniak was a believer. His invention would be Apple’s and Apple’s alone.
Wayne was 20 years older than Jobs and Wozniak, and more mature than either of them. They were impressed by his business sense, and decided to make him a partner in the company. Instead of splitting ownership of Apple Computer 50/50 as they had planned, Wozniak and Jobs each took a 45 percent stake in the company, and gave Wayne the remaining 10 percent. That way, whenever they couldn’t agree on something, Wayne would serve as a tiebreaker, giving the winner the 55 percent majority needed to prevail.
Ten percent of Apple Computer for two hours’ work—what could possibly go wrong? To find out, turn to page 384.
The natural look: 76% of bank robbers do not wear a disguise.
LAUGH LINES
People who are paid to be funny earn their money.
“The hardest part about going to Hypochondriacs Anonymous is admitting that you don’t have a problem.”
—Gene Hunt
“I stop my microwave at 0:01 to feel like I’m a bomb defuser.”
—Jerry Seinfeld
“You offer a sincere compliment on a great mustache and suddenly she’s not your friend.”
—Marty Feldman
“I bet a cannibal’s fridge would look a lot like an office fridge: full of containers labeled with people’s names.”
—Julius Sharpe
“Dad always thought laughter was the best medicine, which I guess is why several of us died of tuberculosis.”
—Jack Handey
“There are no B batteries. If there were, you wouldn’t know if someone was stuttering. ‘Hello I’d like some B-batteries.’ ‘What kind?’ ‘B-batteries.’ ‘What kind?!’”
—Demetri Martin
“George Washington’s brother, Lawrence, was the Uncle of Our Country.”
—George Carlin
“I was on a plane recently reading an article about environmentalism in the in-flight magazine. That’s right—I was reading about the environment while sitting on a pollution machine that can fly.”
—Hari Kondabolu
“I hope cell phones aren’t bad for us, but I would like the excuse: ‘I can’t talk right now. You’re giving me cancer.’”
—Whitney Cummings
“So all my friends have kids now…which I think is rude.”
—David Cross
“If you were to send a werewolf to the moon, would he be a werewolf permanently?”
—Kristen Schaal
“I was out with a guy who told me I didn’t need to drink to make myself more fun to be around. I said, ‘I’m drinking so you’re more fun to be around.’”
—Chelsea Handler
People in big cities produce more earwax than people in rural areas.
A BAD CASE OF THE FLUE
You’ve heard the expression “caught between a rock and a hard place”? These folks got caught between some bricks…and some other bricks.
Flue Sufferer: Alejandro Valencio, a spurned suitor living in Evansville, Indiana
Down: In September 2007, Valencio and his girlfriend of several months split up. A few weeks later, an intoxicated Valencio showed up at her house at 3:30 in the morning. She refused to let him in, so he climbed onto the roof, lowered himself down the chimney, and got stuck.
…and Out: When firefighters arrived to extricate Valencio from the chimney, his ex-girlfriend wouldn’t let them work. “Leave him in the chimney and let him die,” she said. The firefighters called the police, the pol
ice arrested the ex-girlfriend, and then the firefighters broke Valencio out of the chimney. So did loverboy learn his lesson? Nope. Only hours later he was back…with a TV news crew in tow. By then his ex was back too, and she was not happy to see him. She attacked Valencio with a garbage can and threw bottles at him until he finally left. “I’ve dated a lot of psychos in my life, but nobody like that,” the woman told reporters,” Valencio commented. “Everyone do stupid things sometimes when they’re drunk.”
Flue Sufferer: Michael Urbano, 23, of Hayward, California
Down: One night in 2006, Urbano returned home from a night of bar hopping and realized he was locked out of his stepmom’s house. She wasn’t home, so he did what anyone else would do: He climbed onto the roof, disconnected the TV cable, and tried to use it to rappel down the inside of the chimney like a mountain climber. But first he stripped naked, figuring that his skin would have less “friction” against the inside of the chimney. He only made it partway before the cable snapped and he fell, getting stuck (naked) three quarters of the way down.
…and Out: No one heard Urbano’s chimney-muffled cries until neighbors on a 6:30 a.m. stroll called police. The cops couldn’t determine where the screams were coming from until they noticed the spark arrester from the chimney sitting on the roof. Firefighters were then dispatched to get Urbano out. Showing an amazing dedication to duty, one of them climbed into the fireplace and shoved his feet up to the naked Urbano, freeing him enough that the firefighters on the roof were able to pull him to safety. Police arrested Urbano on suspicion of being under the influence of drugs. (No word on whether he still lives with his stepmom.)
In Japan, work-related suicide is considered an occupational hazard.
Flue Sufferers: Bonnie Earle, 10, and Nicole Jones, 6, of San Mateo, California
Down: When the two girls accidently got locked out of Nicole’s grandparents’ house in July 1991, they decided to try and get in through the chimney. Bonnie lowered Nicole down feet first, but Bonnie’s hands slipped and Nicole dropped all the way down the chimney, where her foot got stuck in the damper. Bonnie tried to climb down the chimney to rescue her friend and got stuck too.
…and Out: Luckily for the girls, a third kid saw what happened and told an adult, who called 911. The girls spent an hour in the chimney before firefighters pulled them to safety, unharmed. “They just needed a bath,” said a fire department spokesperson.
Flue Sufferer: Glenn Clark, 25, of Trenton, New Jersey
Down: On April 13, 1981, Clark and an accomplice were burglarizing Reiss Men’s and Boys’ Shop in Trenton when they set off an alarm. Police responded and caught the accomplice, but not Clark, who ran past them and disappeared. When police couldn’t find him, they assumed he’d somehow escaped, but he hadn’t—he was hiding inside the building’s chimney, hanging by his fingertips. Before Clark could climb out, his fingers slipped and he fell 16 feet into the chimney.
…and Out: Clark spent six days in complete darkness. He might still be in the chimney today, were it not for the fact that Easter fell on April 19 that year. On ordinary days, the street noise was so loud that no one could hear Clark screaming for help. But when the Easter holiday arrived, things quieted down just enough for a woman walking her dog past the store to hear his cries. Firefighters smashed their way into the brick chimney with hammers and chisels and pulled Clark to safety. After a checkup (he had scrapes and bruises, but was OK), he was arrested for burglary.
We’re on a collision course with the Andromeda galaxy. Crash date: 3 billion years from now.
Flue Sufferer: Joseph Schexnider, 22, who lived in Abbeville, Louisiana, 150 miles west of New Orleans
Down: In 1984 Schexnider disappeared from Abbeville shortly before he was scheduled to appear in court on charges of possessing a stolen vehicle. He was a vagabond and had traveled with circuses and carnivals in the past, so when he got into trouble with the law no one was surprised that he seemed to skip town. His family never reported him missing, even though he stayed away for nearly 30 years.
…and Out: In May 2011, a contractor renovating the second floor of the Abbeville Bank noticed a piece of fabric hanging inside an old chimney. He gave it a tug…and skeletal human remains fell into the fireplace. The skeleton was wearing a shirt, jeans, sneakers, and a pair of underwear. Schexnider’s name was written on the waistband of the underwear, and his birth certificate and social security card were found in a wallet in the back pocket of the jeans. DNA tests confirmed that it was Schexnider, but due to the advanced state of decomposition, coroners were unable to determine a specific cause of death. No one knows why Schexnider was on the roof of the bank or why he tried to climb down the chimney. He wasn’t carrying burglary tools or anything that could have been used to carry money, so he probably wasn’t there to rob the bank. It’s possible that he was simply fooling around. The rooftops of the buildings in that part of town are easily accessible, and playing on the roofs is a popular pastime for local kids. “He was the kind of guy,” a family friend told reporters, “who would do things without really thinking them through.”
* * *
SEVEN THINGS YOU CAN DO WITH MAYONNAISE…AT YOUR OWN RISK
1. Remove gum from hair.
2. Clean piano keys.
3. Condition your hair.
4. Polish plant leaves.
5. Kill head lice.
6. Get tree sap off of cars.
7. Cool a sunburn.
Falcons are more closely related to parrots than to hawks or eagles.
WORLD’S HIGHEST…
Scared of heights? Stay away from these places!
SWIMMING POOL
The pool at the Hong Kong Ritz-Carlton Hotel is on the 116th floor of the city’s tallest building: the 1,600-foot International Commerce Centre. Hotel guests can float around at an elevation nearly 100 feet higher than the top of the highest building in the United States, Chicago’s Willis Tower (formerly the Sears Tower).
GLASS OBSERVATION DECK
The floor of the 200-foot-long glass-bottomed Skywalk juts out from the side of a 4,691-foot cliff on Tianmen Mountain in Hunan Province, China. The walkway is three feet wide, but visitors tend to cling to the cliff face. Opened in late 2011, it is nearly 700 feet higher than the Skywalk on the West Rim of the Grand Canyon.
FLAGPOLE
In 2010 the government of Azerbaijan celebrated the nation’s independence by building a 531-foot freestanding flagpole at the National Flag Square in the capitol city of Baku. It was the highest in the world…for six months, until Trident Support, the California company that built the huge pole, beat its own record by 10 feet at the Palace of the Nation in Dushanbe, Tajikistan.
CHIMNEY
In 1899 a Kazakhstani mineral explorer named Kosym Pshembayev founded a city in Russia on two giant mounds of salt. He called the city Ekibastuz, which means “two lumps of salt.” In 1987 the coal-fired Gres-2 Power Station in Ekibastuz, which provides power to 40 percent of the country, built another landmark—the world’s highest chimney. (Tall chimneys allow pollutants to spread out over a larger area before they return to the ground.) The 1,377-foot steel-reinforced concrete smokestack is taller than the roof of the Empire State Building.
What’s nomophobia? The fear of being out of cell phone contact. (It’s short for “no mobile.”)
BRIDGE
Traffic got so bad on the N9 highway near Millau, France, that in 2005 engineers from the French company Eiffage were hired to build a bypass. Called the Millau Viaduct, it’s an 8,000-foot suspension bridge that carries cars 885 feet above Millau and the nearby Tarn River Valley. The spires of the bridge top out at 1,125 feet, making it about 150 feet higher than another structure that Eiffage built—the Eiffel Tower.
AQUEDUCT
Two thousand years ago, a friend of Augustus Caesar named Marcus Agrippa brought fresh water to the people of Nemausus, which today is the city of Nimes, France. The closest freshwater spring was more than 12 miles away, and a straight
path to Nemausus would have required a five-mile tunnel, an impossible feat for ancient Roman technology. Instead, Agrippa stacked six-ton blocks of stone into a triple-bridge system that carried water 160-feet high across the countryside. Sections of the aqueduct, which Agrippa built without mortar, are still standing.
HOTEL ROOM
Most of the world’s tallest buildings are office buildings or tourist attractions—you can’t actually stay the night in many of them. But you can at the fourth largest building in the world. The top 17 stories—floors 102 through 118—of the International Commerce Center in Hong Kong are occupied by a branch of the Ritz Carlton hotel chain. A room on the 118th floor places a visitor 1,587 feet in the air. It’s the highest penthouse in the world.
TOILET
We’re sure that more than one man has written his name in the snow at the summit of Mt. Everest. But the world’s highest constructed toilet is an odorless, eco-friendly “Saniverte” outhouse 14,300 feet up on Europe’s highest mountain, Mont Blanc in France. A French “dry-toilet” company called Ecosphere built the self-composting commode after locals complained of yellow and brown spots dotting the mountain.
The heavy metal band Stovokor sings in Klingon.
THE CURIOUS CASE OF THE AMERICAN ACCENT, PART I
Hey, youz! Whah do ‘mericuns have all differnt aks-ay-ents? It’s, like, totally confusing and somewhat bizzahh, dontcha know.
Uncle John's Fully Loaded 25th Anniversary Bathroom Reader (Uncle John's Bathroom Reader) Page 23
