Stephen Wozniak - Co-founds Apple Computer Co., 1976

Wozniak and Jobs used Jobs' parents' garage in Los Altos for their base of operations to build the new computer. They settled on the name Apple, and in April 1976 Apple Computer Co. officially went into business. Wozniak was responsible for computer and software design, while Jobs handled marketing and sales and other aspects of the business. The company's first computer was called the Apple I. Within a few weeks a local computer shop placed an order for $50,000 worth of computers, forcing Wozniak and Jobs to borrow money to build and deliver the computers on time.

During Apple's first year Wozniak continued to work on improvements to the Apple I while still holding a job at Hewlett-Packard. By the end of 1976, however, Jobs and new business partner Mike Mark-kula convinced Wozniak, who had recently married, to leave Hewlett-Packard and work full time for Apple. In January 1977 Apple officially incorporated and moved into a new office in Cupertino.

After working full-time on his new computer design for a couple of months, Wozniak completed his design for the Apple II in 1977. The new computer was the first fully assembled programmable computer that was small enough to fit on a desktop. Among its innovative features were a high-resolution color video display, a cassette-tape interface, and a built-in keyboard. The computer also included a plastic case and a built-in speaker for sound.

The Apple II came to be regarded as the world's first personal computer. It was also an immediate success, and Apple recorded $2 million in sales by the end of 1977. Seeking to make even more improvements to the Apple II, Wozniak, together with programmer Randy Wigginton, invented a flexible disk drive to replace the cassette-tape interface. The flexible disk drive read information from a floppy diskette instead of a cassette tape. By mid-1978 all Apple II computers came with a flexible disk drive. The creation of the flexible disk drive was another innovation that is now regarded as an important step in the development of personal computers.