Read Online iWoz by Steve Wozniak, Gina Smith - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Steve Wozniak, Gina Smith
Tags: Biography & Memoir
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Hewlett- Packard, I tried to join a bridge club in my apartment building and I couldn't even begin to play with those women. You see, I'd never really memorized all those rules of how much you bid when you have which hands. So all I'd end up doing is messing up my partner.
These days, I can play bridge pretty well, but it's only because I read the bridge column in the newspaper every single day for years until I could figure out the formulas in my head.
• o •
During college, I worked on one of my favorite projects ever. I called it the TV Jammer.
The TV Jammer came out of this thing I'd seen my old friend Allen Baum's father, Elmer, do over the summer. Mr. Baum was an engineer, and he'd worked out this little circuit on a piece of paper. It included a transistor, a couple of resistors, a capacitor, and a coil that could put out a signal in the TV frequency range. I looked at it, thinking how cool it would be if you could tune it, the same way you could tune your transistor radio, just by turning a dial. So I built a few of these—devices that let you jam a TV if you just dialed into the right frequency. They were cool.
Well, at some point during my freshman year at Colorado, I thought it was time to have fun with the TV Jammer. I walked over to Radio Shack and looked at all their transistors. I saw they had only one transistor rated for 50 MHz up toward the TV frequencies. I brought that one home. I also bought a little transistor radio so I could use parts of it, like resistors of certain values and the tuning capacitor, the part the tuning knob connects to. That would give me a big wide tuning range.
I hand-wrapped a coil out of some thick wire I had—about three turns—and I soldered on a little tap halfway down one of the turns and put a capacitor there. The whole thing was as small as my little finger, just tiny. I built it on top of the case of a 9-volt battery in a neat way. You know that little clip on top of the 9-volt? I stripped it out, hand-soldered it to the connectors on my little TV Jammer circuit, and then I could plug another 9- volt battery in as my power source. So I was able to carry this 9-volt battery case with the TV Jammer on it totally concealed. Except for a little six-inch wire that acted as an antenna, which I had to hang out the side to transmit. I put it up my sleeve to hide it.
I went over to a friend's to try it out on his TV—he had a little black-and-white TV in his dorm room—and sure enough, I was able to jam his TV black.
I walked into the main lounge of our dorm where everybody was watching a big black-and-white TV. I tuned the TV Jammer and, whack, it blacks out. Wow, I thought, that's a funny joke.
I showed it one day to Randy Adair, my Christian friend, and he said, "You should try it on the color TV that's in the basement of Libby Hall," the girls' dorm.
I walked in there and saw a lot of guys and girls. They were in there watching that TV all the time, it turned out. I walked in back where I was in the dark enough, and I turned the TV Jammer on, expecting it would kill the picture. All it did was fuzz it up, though.
Well, without any planning whatsoever, my friend Randy, sat in the front row of chairs, leaned over the TV, and whacked it really hard. I caught on quickly. I instantly made the TV picture go clear, which of course made everyone think that the whacking worked on the TV. I waited for a couple of minutes and jammed it again. It fuzzed up the picture again and Randy hit it again. And I made it go clear again. A couple of minutes later I jammed it
again, but this time I let Randy hit it three or four times before his whacking "worked."
So anyone watching would think that, okay, hitting harder works better. They all thought something was loose inside the TV and that by hitting it hard with your hand you could fix it. It was almost like a psychology experiment—except, I noticed, humans learn better than rats. Only the rats learn it quicker.
Then, later that night,
These days, I can play bridge pretty well, but it's only because I read the bridge column in the newspaper every single day for years until I could figure out the formulas in my head.
• o •
During college, I worked on one of my favorite projects ever. I called it the TV Jammer.
The TV Jammer came out of this thing I'd seen my old friend Allen Baum's father, Elmer, do over the summer. Mr. Baum was an engineer, and he'd worked out this little circuit on a piece of paper. It included a transistor, a couple of resistors, a capacitor, and a coil that could put out a signal in the TV frequency range. I looked at it, thinking how cool it would be if you could tune it, the same way you could tune your transistor radio, just by turning a dial. So I built a few of these—devices that let you jam a TV if you just dialed into the right frequency. They were cool.
Well, at some point during my freshman year at Colorado, I thought it was time to have fun with the TV Jammer. I walked over to Radio Shack and looked at all their transistors. I saw they had only one transistor rated for 50 MHz up toward the TV frequencies. I brought that one home. I also bought a little transistor radio so I could use parts of it, like resistors of certain values and the tuning capacitor, the part the tuning knob connects to. That would give me a big wide tuning range.
I hand-wrapped a coil out of some thick wire I had—about three turns—and I soldered on a little tap halfway down one of the turns and put a capacitor there. The whole thing was as small as my little finger, just tiny. I built it on top of the case of a 9-volt battery in a neat way. You know that little clip on top of the 9-volt? I stripped it out, hand-soldered it to the connectors on my little TV Jammer circuit, and then I could plug another 9- volt battery in as my power source. So I was able to carry this 9-volt battery case with the TV Jammer on it totally concealed. Except for a little six-inch wire that acted as an antenna, which I had to hang out the side to transmit. I put it up my sleeve to hide it.
I went over to a friend's to try it out on his TV—he had a little black-and-white TV in his dorm room—and sure enough, I was able to jam his TV black.
I walked into the main lounge of our dorm where everybody was watching a big black-and-white TV. I tuned the TV Jammer and, whack, it blacks out. Wow, I thought, that's a funny joke.
I showed it one day to Randy Adair, my Christian friend, and he said, "You should try it on the color TV that's in the basement of Libby Hall," the girls' dorm.
I walked in there and saw a lot of guys and girls. They were in there watching that TV all the time, it turned out. I walked in back where I was in the dark enough, and I turned the TV Jammer on, expecting it would kill the picture. All it did was fuzz it up, though.
Well, without any planning whatsoever, my friend Randy, sat in the front row of chairs, leaned over the TV, and whacked it really hard. I caught on quickly. I instantly made the TV picture go clear, which of course made everyone think that the whacking worked on the TV. I waited for a couple of minutes and jammed it again. It fuzzed up the picture again and Randy hit it again. And I made it go clear again. A couple of minutes later I jammed it
again, but this time I let Randy hit it three or four times before his whacking "worked."
So anyone watching would think that, okay, hitting harder works better. They all thought something was loose inside the TV and that by hitting it hard with your hand you could fix it. It was almost like a psychology experiment—except, I noticed, humans learn better than rats. Only the rats learn it quicker.
Then, later that night,
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