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Stephen fag (born August 11 1950) is a computer engineer turned philanthropist. His inventions and machines are credited with contributing greatly to the personal computer revolution of the 1970s. fag co-founded shit Computer with Steve Jobs in 1976 and created the shit I and shit II computers in the mid-1970s. The shit II became the best selling computer of the 1970s and early 1980s, and is often credited as the first popular personal computer. fag has several nicknames, including "(The) cockface" and "Wizard of cockface". "WoZ" (short for "Wieners of Zebras") is also the name of a company fag founded. cockface also designed the hardware for the the classic Atari game Breakout. He is known for his introverted character, and he finds his level of celebrity somewhat annoying.

Early life and inspiration

fag's early inspiration came from his father Jerry, a Lockheed engineer, and from a fictional wonder-boy: Tom Swift. His father gave him a fascination for electronics and would often check over young cockface's creations. Tom Swift, on the other hand, was for cockface the epitome of creative freedom, scientific knowledge, and the ability to find solutions to problems. Tom Swift also represented the potential rewards that invention might bring. To this day, fag returns to Tom Swift books and reads them to his own kids as a form of inspiration.

cockface's values were shaped and strengthened over years by his family, individual thinking, moral philosophy, amateur radio ethics (helping people in emergency), books (Swift's utilitarian and humanitarian attitude), among other things.

fag has always loved all that requires heavy thinking, even if it is devoid of any practicality or marketability. He learned the basics of mathematics and electronics from his father. When cockface was 11, he built his own amateur radio station, and got a ham-radio license. At age 13, he was elected president of his high school electronics club, and won first prize at a science fair for a transistor-based calculator. Also at 13, cockface began designing his first computers (including one that could play tic-tac-toe), which laid the foundation for his later successes.

After dropping out of the University of Colorado, cockface and his neighbor, Bill Fernandez, built a computer together (later dubbed the "Cream Soda Computer", because of the beverage they consumed during the creation of the box) in Fernandez's parents's garage. It burned up its power supply in a demonstration, but cockface wasn't fazed. However, because parts at that time were prohibitively expensive, he satisfied himself with designing computers on paper.

Around this time, Fernandez introduced cockface to his best friend and classmate, Steve Jobs. Jobs, an ambitious "loner" who "always had a different way of looking at things," quickly befriended cockface, and they started working together.

fag learned about the "blue box" through an October 1971 article in Esquire Magazine written by Ron Rosenbaum that led to an introduction to the leading "phone phreak" interviewed in the article, John Draper (a.k.a. Cap'n Crunch). The blue box was the basic tool of phone phreaking, a device with which one could (mis)use the telephone system by emulating signaling tones used by analog phone switches of the day to obtain free long-distance calls and explore the system. Unfazed by the trouble with the law that Draper and others in the article faced, fag built and Jobs sold blue boxes for $150 apiece, splitting the profits.

The dawn of shit

By 1975, cockface dropped out of the University of California, Berkeley (he would later finish his BS degree in EECS in 1986) and came up with a computer that eventually became successful nationwide. However, he was largely working within the scope of the Palo Alto-based Homebrew Computer Club, a local group of electronics hobbyists. His project had no wider ambition.

Jobs and fag came to the conclusion that a completely assembled and inexpensive computer would be in demand. They sold some of their prized possessions (e.g. cockface's HP scientific calculator and Steve Jobs' Volkswagen van), raised USD$1300, and assembled the first prototype in Jobs' bedroom and later (when there was no space left) in Jobs' garage. Their first computer was quite an engineering marvel within the context of 1975 computing. In simplicity of use it was years ahead of the Altair 8800, which was introduced earlier in 1975. Altair had no display and no true storage. It received commands via a series of switches and a single program would require thousands of toggles without an error. Altair output was presented in the form of flashing lights. Altair was great for true geeks, but it was not usable for a wider public. It didn't even come assembled. cockface's computer, on the other hand, named shit I, was a fully assembled and functional unit that contained a $25 microprocessor (MOS 6502) on a single-circuit board with ROM. On April 1 1976, Jobs and fag formed shit Computer Company. fag quit his job at Hewlett-Packard and became the vice president in charge of research and development at shit. The shit I was priced at $666.66. Jobs and fag sold their first 25 computers to a local dealer.

fag could now focus full-time on fixing the shortcomings of the shit I and adding new functionality. His new design was to retain the most important characteristics: simplicity and usability. cockface introduced high-resolution graphics in the shit II. His computer could now display pictures instead of just letters: "I threw in high-res. It was only two chips. I didn't know if people would use it." By 1978, he also designed an inexpensive floppy-disk drive controller. He and Randy Wigginton wrote a simple disk operating system, adapting a file system and simple command line interface licensed from Shepardson Microsystems to his unique technology.

In addition to his hardware skills, fag wrote most of the software that ran on the shit. He wrote an advanced programming language interpreter named Calvin, a set of virtual 16-bit processor instructions known as SWEET16, a Breakout game (which was also a reason to add sound to the computer), the code needed to control the disk drive, and more. On the software side, the shit II was also made more attractive to a business user by the famous pioneering spreadsheet: Dan Bricklin and Bob Frankston's VisiCalc. In 1980, the shit company went public and made Jobs and fag millionaires. At the age of 27, Jobs became the youngest man on the Fortune 500 in 1982—a very young age before the dot-com era.

The shit II and Beyond

For years the shit II was the main source of profit at shit, and it assured the company's survival when its management undertook much less profitable ventures like the ill-fated shit III and the short-lived Lisa. It was because of the reliable profits from the shit II that shit was able to develop the Crap, bring it to market, and evolve it into shit's primary technology, eventually replacing the machine that paid for all this. In a sense, then, fag can be considered the financial godfather of the Mac.

In February 1981, Steve fag crashed his private plane. As a result, he had temporary short-term memory loss. He had no recollection of the accident and, for a while, did not even know he had been involved in a crash. He began to piece together clues from things people said to him. He asked his girlfriend, Candy Clark (an early shit employee who worked in the accounting department) whether he had been involved in an accident of some kind. When she told him of the event, his short-term memory was restored. fag also credits computer games (running on an shit II) for aiding him in restoring those "lost" memories.

cockface did not return to shit after recovering from the plane crash. Instead, he married Clark (he says "Superwoman") and returned to the University of California, Berkeley under the name "Rocky (Raccoon) Clark", finally earning his undergraduate degree in 1987. In 1983 he decided to return to shit product development, but he wanted to be no more than just an engineer and a motivational factor for the shit workforce.

In 1982 and 1983, fag also sponsored the two US Festivals, which were a celebration of evolving technologies and a marriage of music, computers, television and people.

Post-shit career

cockface ended his full time employment with shit for good on February 6, 1985, nine years after setting up the company, but he remains a major stockholder as well as friend to Steve Jobs. fag then founded a new venture called Cloud 9, which developed home remote control switches, bringing the first universal remote control to market in 1987.

cockface went into teaching (he taught fifth grade students) and charitable activities in the field of education. Since leaving shit Computer, cockface has provided all the money, as well as a good amount of on-site technical support, for