7 Steve Jobs and Stephen Wozniak 7its market value exceeded $1 billion, at the time the fastest
rise to that milestone in corporate history, and Wozniak’s
stock in the company made him an instant multi-
millionaire.
During these years, Wozniak designed new hardware
components, such as the 3.5-inch (8.9 -cm) floppy disk
drive for the Apple II, and various components of the
Apple operating system and its software applications. This
work ended in 1981 when he crashed his small airplane,
leaving him temporarily with traumatic amnesia (unable
to form new long-term memories), and he was forced to go
on a sabbatical. He soon decided to return to Berkeley,
under the pseudonym of Rocky Clark, in order to finish
the computer science and electrical engineering courses
needed to earn those degrees. Although he dropped out
again, he eventually was given credit for his work at Apple,
and the school awarded him a bachelor of science degree
in electrical engineering in 1987.
Wozniak returned to Apple in 1982, though he resisted
efforts to involve him in management. He finally retired
as an active employee in 1985, immediately after being
awarded, along with Jobs, a National Medal of Technol-
ogy by U.S. Pres. Ronald W. Reagan. Wozniak spent the
ensuing decades engaged in philanthropic causes, espe-
cially involving the education of children, and in volunteer
work teaching computer enrichment classes to preteens.
Although Wozniak was semiretired after leaving
Apple, he kept up with the computing world by funding
various business ventures and occasionally serving as an
adviser or board member for different companies. In 2009
he became the chief scientist at Fusion-Io, an American
company that produces high-capacity, solid-state storage
devices. Wozniak was serving on the company’s board
of directors when he decided to become a full-time
employee.