Robert Friedland - Wikipedia Robert Friedland resigned from Bowdoin College in 1970 after being arrested by federal authorities for the possession of an estimated $100,000 worth of LSD, a crime for which he was sentenced to two years in federal prison, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Fr…
but received early release on probation. He graduated in 1974 from Reed College, Oregon, with a political science degree. During his time at Reed he met Steve Jobs with whom he shared an interest in Eastern spirituality. At the time, Friedland served as the caretaker of an apple
farm south of Portland that was owned by his millionaire uncle Marcel Muller and Jobs would come on the weekends and help with the apple orchard, which served as the inspiration for the name of his company, Apple Inc. Bill Hewlett attended undergraduate classes taught by
Fred Terman at Stanford and became acquainted with David Packard. A young Steve Jobs, then age 12, called Hewlett (whose number was in the phone book) and requested any available parts for a frequency counter he was building. Hewlett, impressed with Jobs' initiative, offered
him a summer job assembling frequency counters. The location of the Los Altos home meant that Jobs would be able to attend nearby Homestead High School, which had strong ties to Silicon Valley. He began his first year there in late 1968 along with Bill Fernandez, who introduced
Jobs to Steve Wozniak, and would become Apple's first employee. Stephen Gary Wozniak was born on August 11, 1950, in San Jose, California. His mother, Margaret Louise Wozniak (née Kern) (1923–2014), was from Washington state, and his father, Francis Jacob "Jerry" Wozniak (1925–
1994) of Michigan, was an engineer for the Lockheed Corporation. In 1975, Wozniak began designing and developing the computer that would eventually make him famous, the Apple I. With the Apple I, Wozniak was largely working to impress other members of the Palo Alto-based
Homebrew Computer Club, a local group of electronics hobbyists interested in computing. The Homebrew Computer Club was an informal group of electronic enthusiasts and technically minded hobbyists who gathered to trade parts, circuits, and information pertaining to DIY
construction of personal computing devices. It was started by Gordon French and Fred Moore who met at the Community Computer Center in Menlo Park. The Homebrew Computer Club's newsletter was one of the most influential forces in the formation of the culture of Silicon Valley.
Created and edited by its members, it initiated the idea of the personal computer, and helped its members build the original kit computers, like the Altair. One such influential event was the publication of Bill Gates's "Open Letter to Hobbyists", which lambasted the early
hackers of the time for violating the copyrights of commercial software programs.