Childhood: Entry 2

Jobs later skipped the fifth grade and went straight to middle school in Crittenden after the move. It was a rough time in Steve’s life because the other students gave him a hard time about his adoption. They often asked him, “didn’t your mother love you?” Because of the rough times he faced, he told his parents he would not be returning to Crittenden at age 11. Paul and Clara apparently understood and moved their family to Los Altos, a town a few miles away that had a better educational program. In this town, everything was different. There were no stuffy traditions and no cultural baggage. You could be whoever and whatever you set out to be. When Steve was 14, he was introduced to an older kid named Steve Wozniak. Steve Wozniak was building a small computer board that he had named the Cream Soda Computer. Wozniak later recalled that it was hard for him to explain to people exactly what kind of design stuff he worked on. But he said Jobs understood and got it immediately. The two boys went on to experiment with different things such as blue boxes, used to mimic the tones used by phone operators and one of the earliest forms of hacking. At that time in his life, Jobs realized he had an interest in technology. Later, the boys sold the blue boxes on the campus at the University of California. They found themeselves at the forefront of an idustry on the verge of an explosion. They eventually gave up the entrepreneurship for fear of getting busted but Jobs later said that without blue boxes, there would be no Apple.

Sources: EBSCOhost: The Steve Jobs Nobody Know: by Jeff Goodell, Encyclopedia Britannica-Steve Jobs