Few days back, on the way to Miami, one of the top places to visit in my long wish list :) :), for a trip, I was reading biography of American business magnet, Late Steve Jobs. It was a six hour journey, so, to kill some time, I read. Like many others, I am also a big fan of Steve Jobs. He was fascinated by electronics items since his childhood. He used to do many pranks using electronic items; like in school interchanged the locks of friends's bicycles, made sign boards and hung up in school announcing "bring your pets to the school on pet day" while there was no such day in the school's calendar; putting sound recorders in entire house and listening everybody's voice at the his room like a control room; putting explosive in the teacher's chair, designing TV noise generator and making people believe if they stand on one leg or in some other position while touching the TV antenna, only then picture would show-up on the TV screen, making "Tick-Tick" bomb, even, school Principal was terrified from "Tick-Tick" bomb etc. List of his pranks is pretty long. All are really good LOL moments and exciting as well. Here, I wish to share one of his pranks which, according to Steve, paved the foundation of Apple i.e. "The Blue Box". After that, rest is history.
Steve Jobs met Steve Gary Wozniak, nick-named "Woz", a computer engineer from UC, Berkeley, USA. Soon, both became very good friends because of their common interests in electronics. Steve Jobs said about him "he was the only person I met, who knew more electronics than me". One morning, Woz's mother left an article titled "Secrets of the Little Blue Box" in the kitchen for him. At the lunch time, he read it and got excited. Actually, Blue Box was an unauthorized device developed by hackers that could generate same frequency tones used by telephone operators. And, one can make free long distance calls. Woz gave a call to his best friend, Steve. As expected, Steve was also equally excited with the article. As it had the potential to cause big losses to AT & T, the largest telecom service provider in US, it had asked to all libraries to remove the journal article from their shelves. On the same day, Jobs and Woz went to the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center (SLAC) library. It was Sunday and the library was closed. They entered from the some secret door and got the article. They decided to replicate the machine and bought the parts to make an analog Blue Box. After several attempts, they succeeded but the analog version was not stable. Hence, Woz decided to make a digital version. Finally, they succeeded with the help of a music student. To try it, they attempted first call to Woz's uncle from Jobs's house in California. Woz said in the excitement "Hi, we are calling you for free! We are calling you for free!". Jobs jumped in between "We are calling from California! From California! With a Blue Box!" The man replied in anger "I am also in California". It was a wrong number. Nevertheless, they got the success and their Blue Box was woking. They continued to make fun and pranks with Blue Box. The most daring prank was to call the Vatican. Woz pretended to be Henry Kissinger and wanted to talk to the pope. He said "Ve are at de summit meeting in Moscow and Ve need to talk to de pope". It was 5:30 a.m. and the pope was sleeping. When they called back, they got the Bishop and he realized that it was a prank call. Woz got nerves and hung up the phone. Jobs came-up with idea of commercializing the Blue Box. They made the device at a cost of $ 40, and Jobs decided to sell it a price of $ 150.
The fun and profit business came to an end when one day Jobs tried to sell to some guy at pizza parlor. After seeing demonstration at public booth, that man asked them to walk over to the car to collect the money. When they reached the car, he looted the Blue Box from Jobs and Woz at the gun point. The guy also gave a phone number to Jobs and said he would try to pay if it worked. Later Jobs called him and found that the guy was not able to figure out how to use the Blue Box. Though Jobs persuaded the guy to meet him and Woz but they decided not to meet the dangerous guy. According to Steve "If it had not been the Blue Boxes, there would not have been an apple". They learned how to work together and gained the confidence that they can handle technical problems and can put things to production level. After this, Apple is history.
Ref: Isaacson W., Steve Jobs: The Exclusive Biography
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