Read iWoz for Free Online

really. Unlike a resistor, a diode is a one-way street. You can send electrons—that is, electricity—-just one way. Electricity can go through, but it can't come back through. If you try, it will short everything out. And this was a problem because I'd gotten to the point where if I tried to turn on some middle- level element and its electrons, I wound up with a feedback path that ended up turning on a bunch of lower elements and extra electrons that really didn't belong there. Anyway, I needed a solution, and that's how I learned all about diodes.
Along with this huge display, I also displayed a large collection of elements. You know, jars of beryllium, pieces of copper, even a bottle of mercury. I got a lot of these samples just by asking a professor at San Jose State to donate them to me.
And yes, I won. First place. Blue ribbon. And that was cool.
But it wasn't the most important thing. Looking back on it now, I see this was an amazing learning experience, just classic. My dad guided me, but I did the work. And my dad, to his credit, never tried to teach me formulas about gravitational power and electric power between protons, or stuff like what the force is between protons and electrons. That would have been way
beyond what I could understand at that point. He never tried to force me to try and jump ahead because I wouldn't have learned it. I wasn't ready for that level of knowledge.
    • o •
In sixth grade, small step by small step, I learned how to build AND and OR gates, the basic building blocks of computer technology. Digital circuits figure everything out—and I mean everything—based on what is on (Is) and what is off (Os).
I was really getting into logic. My dad had helped me understand the concept of logic earlier by using the classic paper-and-pen tic-tac-toe game. This game, if you understand the logic, you will never, ever lose. That's what I based my next project on: the tic- tac-toe machine. The machine I built would never, ever lose. It is so totally a logic game, but it is also a psychological game because you can beat someone who thinks they can never be beaten. If the X is here and the other X is over there, what should the outcome be? This plywood was covered with parts and it was a huge project. And having a huge project is a huge part of learning engineering—learning anything, probably.
Doing long, long jobs that aren't just some real simple quick thing like a flashlight, but things that take weeks to build, really demonstrates that you've mastered something great. Like, for instance, creating a computerized tic-tac-toe machine that really works by logic.
Unfortunately, though, the system didn't win. It blew up. What I mean by blew up is, the night before the competition, some of the transistors started to put out smoke. Obviously something was wrong. I knew it was going to take forever to find out what piece of equipment had blown and there was no way I was going to be able to do this in time for the contest. What a disappointment, because I like to win. I always, as early as I can remember, wanted to be the best at things. And I often was, as luck had it.
But I also thought at the time that it didn't mean as much to
me at that point, just winning the science fair, because I knew, and my dad knew, that I had actually built this fairly complicated logic machine and it worked.
I mean, even as a kid it was obvious to me what the important thing really was. I said to myself, Look, showing someone an award from a science fair is not as important as knowing you already have the award somewhere at home. And that's not as important as having earned it, even if you don't have the award at home at all. And that's not as important as the most important thing: that you've done the learning on your own to figure out how to do it. I did that learning on my tic-tac-toe machine, and it was very, very close to being done and complete. I'm still proud of it. For me it's the engineering, not the glory, that's