Childhood and Education

Steve Jobs working with Steve Wozniak

Adopted at birth by Paul Jobs and Clara Jobs, Steve was born in February 24, 1955 in San Francisco.Paul Jobs, a machinist for a company that made lasers, taught his son rudimentary electronics and how to work with his hands. His adoptive mother was an accountant, who taught him to read before he went to school.


Steve attended Cupertino Junior High and Homestead High School in Cupertino, California.He frequented after-school lectures at the Hewlett-Packard Company in Palo Alto, California, and was later hired there, working with Steve Wozniak as a summer employee. Following high school graduation in 1972, Steve enrolled at Reed College in Portland, Oregon. Although he dropped out after only one semester, he continued auditing classes at Reed, while sleeping on the floor in friends' rooms, returning Coke bottles for food money, and getting weekly free meals at the local Hare Krishna temple. Jobs later said, "If I had never dropped in on that single calligraphy course in college, the Mac would have never had multiple typefaces or proportionally spaced fonts."