66 years ago, Steve Jobs was born, the genius inventor of technological tools that have revolutionized our lives: from the laptop to the Iphone smartphone and the mouse! But life was also a novel for the number one geek who was also a vegetarian hippie, a lover of India and Lsd, a short-lived boyfriend of Joan Baez…
Very much ahead of his time in terms of technology, but also very much in tune with fashion, Steve Jobs would have been 68 years old this February 24. The visionary inventor was also a hippie adept of the India-Lsd-guitar trip. And he is probably the most famous geek today… Because his imprint is now everywhere on the planet. Through his company Apple, he has indeed changed the behavior of the entire world population, being at the origin of objects that have become everyday and essential: from the laptop to the smartphone…
He knew how to make these tools desirable and sophisticated, and to position them on an accessible luxury segment.
Complex, this man adept of oriental philosophies, vegetarianism and…Lsd was also a tyrant at work, a thousand miles away from the letting go that could have been associated with this personal research.
Should we see in his origins the beginning of the Jobs mystery, always in search of something beyond himself, but also beyond the whole of humanity? Born to a Syrian father and a Swiss mother, he was quickly adopted by an American couple, Paul and Clara Jobs.
Passionate about electronics
It was a good thing they lived in California (Mountain View, then Los Altos and Palo Alto) and his new father was a machinist in a company that manufactured lasers. Initiated by the latter, Steve Jobs will be more interested in the possibilities of electronics than in the content of a classical education.
His self-confidence works wonders: at the age of thirteen, he convinces William Hewlett, the head of the Hewlett-Packard company, to give him the electronic parts he needs. He also got a bonus summer job at the company. That year, he assembled his first frequency meter!
In high school, he met his sidekick Steve Wozniak, who would play a crucial role in his life, and with whom he conducted many experiments in electronics. As early as 1971, the 16 year olds developed and sold several copies of a device that allowed them to make long distance phone calls without having to pay operators…
In 1972, at the age of 17, Steve Jobs left to continue his studies at Reed College in Portland. But in the midst of the hippie wave, he refuses to accept any constraints and is only interested in subjects that he learns as an auditor. Among them…calligraphy which will inspire him later in his wide choice of fonts for the Mac!
Hiring by Atari and trip to India
Two years later, in 1974, he returned to his parents’ home without a diploma but having broadened his horizons.
Luck, which smiles on the bold, will never leave this young creative rebel, well in his time despite everything. In 1974, he was hired by the video game designer Atari…which did not prevent him from taking a seven-month break from his work by traveling to India. Atari must have sensed the potential of its recruit because despite his new look – shaved head and traditional Indian clothes – he found his job. As well as his friend Steve Wozniak who also joined the company! Together, they design the electronic circuit of the video game Breakout. But not only that, because here again, there was no question of following a banal route.
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Featured photo : © Press
