Mind Philosopher: Inventor

Steve Jobs: Biography

Steve Jobs

Steve Jobs: Biography

Steve Jobs co-founded Apple Computers with Steve Wozniak. Under Jobs' guidance, the company pioneered a series of revolutionary technologies, including the iPhone and iPad.

Steve Jobs was born in San Francisco, California, on February 24, 1955, to two University of Wisconsin graduate students who gave him up for adoption. Smart but directionless, Jobs experimented with different pursuits before starting Apple Computers with Steve Wozniak in 1976. Apple's revolutionary products, which include the iPod, iPhone and iPad, are now seen as dictating the evolution of modern technology. He died in 2011, following a long battle with pancreatic cancer.

Early Life

Steven Paul Jobs was born on February 24, 1955, in San Francisco, California, to Joanne Schieble (later Joanne Simpson) and Abdulfattah "John" Jandali, two University of Wisconsin graduate students who gave their unnamed son up for adoption. His father, Abdulfattah Jandali, was a Syrian political science professor, and his mother, Joanne Schieble, worked as a speech therapist. Shortly after Steve was placed for adoption, his biological parents married and had another child, Mona Simpson. It was not until Jobs was 27 that he was able to uncover information on his biological parents.

As an infant, Steven was adopted by Clara and Paul Jobs and named Steven Paul Jobs. Clara worked as an accountant, and Paul was a Coast Guard veteran and machinist. The family lived in Mountain View, California, within the area that would later become known as Silicon Valley. As a boy, Jobs and his father would work on electronics in the family garage. Paul would show his son how to take apart and reconstruct electronics, a hobby that instilled confidence, tenacity and mechanical prowess in young Jobs.

While Jobs was always an intelligent and innovative thinker, his youth was riddled with frustrations over formal schooling. Jobs was a prankster in elementary school, and his fourth-grade teacher needed to bribe him to study. Jobs tested so well, however, that administrators wanted to skip him ahead to high school—a proposal that his parents declined.

A few years later, while Jobs was enrolled at Homestead High School (1971), he was introduced to his future partner, Steve Wozniak, through a friend of Wozniak's. Wozniak was attending the University of California, Berkeley, at the time. In a 2007 interview with PC World, Wozniak spoke about why he and Jobs clicked so well: "We both loved electronics and the way we used to hook up digital chips," Wozniak said. "Very few people, especially back then, had any idea what chips were, how they worked and what they could do. I had designed many computers, so I was way ahead of him in electronics and computer design, but we still had common interests. We both had pretty much sort of an independent attitude about things in the world. ..."

Apple Computers

After high school, Jobs enrolled at Reed College in Portland, Oregon. Lacking direction, he dropped out of college after six months and spent the next 18 months dropping in on creative classes at the school. Jobs later recounted how one course in calligraphy developed his love of typography.

In 1974, Jobs took a position as a video game designer with Atari. Several months later he left Atari to find spiritual enlightenment in India, traveling the continent and experimenting with psychedelic drugs. In 1976, when Jobs was just 21, he and Wozniak started Apple Computer. The duo started in the Jobs family garage, and funded their entrepreneurial venture by Jobs selling his Volkswagen bus and Wozniak selling his beloved scientific calculator.

Jobs and Wozniak are credited with revolutionizing the computer industry by democratizing the technology and making the machines smaller, cheaper, intuitive and accessible to everyday consumers. Wozniak conceived a series of user-friendly personal computers, and—with Jobs in charge of marketing—Apple initially marketed the computers for $666.66 each. The Apple I earned the corporation around $774,000. Three years after the release of Apple's second model, the Apple II, the company's sales increased by 700 percent, to $139 million. In 1980, Apple Computer became a publicly traded company, with a market value of $1.2 billion by the end of its very first day of trading. Jobs looked to marketing expert John Sculley of Pepsi-Cola to help fill the role of Apple's president.

Departure from Apple

However, the next several products from Apple suffered significant design flaws, resulting in recalls and consumer disappointment. IBM suddenly surpassed Apple in sales, and Apple had to compete with an IBM/PC-dominated business world. In 1984, Apple released the Macintosh, marketing the computer as a piece of a counterculture lifestyle: romantic, youthful, creative. But despite positive sales and performance superior to IBM's PCs, the Macintosh was still not IBM-compatible. Sculley believed Jobs was hurting Apple, and the company's executives began to phase him out.

Not actually having had an official position with the company he co-founded, Jobs left Apple in 1985 to begin a new hardware and software enterprise called NeXT, Inc. The following year Jobs purchased an animation company from George Lucas, which later became Pixar Animation Studios. Believing in Pixar's potential, Jobs initially invested $50 million of his own money in the company. Pixar Studios went on to produce wildly popular animation films such as Toy Story, Finding Nemo and The Incredibles. Pixar's films have netted $4 billion. The studio merged with Walt Disney in 2006, making Steve Jobs Disney's largest shareholder.

Reinventing Apple

Despite Pixar's success, NeXT, Inc. floundered in its attempts to sell its specialized operating system to mainstream America. Apple eventually bought the company in 1996 for $429 million. The following year, Jobs returned to his post as Apple's CEO.

Just as Steve Jobs instigated Apple's success in the 1970s, he is credited with revitalizing the company in the 1990s. With a new management team, altered stock options and a self-imposed annual salary of $1 a year, Jobs put Apple back on track. His ingenious products such as the iMac, effective branding campaigns and stylish designs caught the attention of consumers once again.

Pancreatic Cancer

In 2003, Jobs discovered that he had a neuroendocrine tumor, a rare but operable form of pancreatic cancer. Instead of immediately opting for surgery, Jobs chose to alter his pescovegetarian diet while weighing Eastern treatment options. For nine months, Jobs postponed surgery, making Apple's board of directors nervous. Executives feared that shareholders would pull their stock if word got out that their CEO was ill. But in the end, Jobs' confidentiality took precedence over shareholder disclosure. In 2004, he had a successful surgery to remove the pancreatic tumor. True to form, in subsequent years Jobs disclosed little about his health.

Later Innovations

Apple introduced such revolutionary products as the Macbook Air, iPod and iPhone, all of which have dictated the evolution of modern technology. Almost immediately after Apple releases a new product, competitors scramble to produce comparable technologies. Apple's quarterly reports improved significantly in 2007: Stocks were worth $199.99 a share—a record-breaking number at that time—and the company boasted a staggering $1.58 billion profit, an $18 billion surplus in the bank and zero debt.

In 2008, iTunes became the second-biggest music retailer in America—second only to Wal-Mart. Half of Apple's current revenue comes from iTunes and iPod sales, with 200 million iPods sold and 6 billion songs downloaded. For these reasons, Apple has been ranked No. 1 on Fortune magazine's list of "America's Most Admired Companies," as well as No. 1 among Fortune 500 companies for returns to shareholders.

Personal Life

Early in 2009, reports circulated about Jobs' weight loss, some predicting his health issues had returned, which included a liver transplant. Jobs had responded to these concerns by stating he was dealing with a hormone imbalance. After nearly a year out of the spotlight, Steve Jobs delivered a keynote address at an invite-only Apple event September 9, 2009.

In respect to his personal life, Steve Jobs remained a private man who rarely discloses information about his family. What is known is Jobs fathered a daughter with girlfriend Chrisann Brennan when he was 23. Jobs denied paternity of his daughter Lisa in court documents, claiming he was sterile. Jobs did not initiate a relationship with his daughter until she was 7, but when she was a teenager she came to live with her father.

In the early 1990s, Jobs met Laurene Powell at Stanford business school, where Powell was an MBA student. They married on March 18, 1991, and lived together in Palo Alto, California, with their three children.

Final Years

On October 5, 2011, Apple Inc. announced that its co-founder had passed away. After battling pancreatic cancer for nearly a decade, Steve Jobs died in Palo Alto. He was 56 years old.

Source : http://www.biography.com/#!/people/steve-jobs-9354805#early-life

4:08 PM
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Benjamin Franklin : Biography

Inventor

Benjamin Franklin

Benjamin Franklin : Biography

Born in Boston in 1706, Benjamin Franklin organized the United States’ first lending library and volunteer fire department. His scientific pursuits included investigations into electricity, mathematics and mapmaking. He helped draft the Declaration of Independence and the U.S Constitution, and negotiated the 1783 Treaty of Paris, which marked the end of the Revolutionary War.

Early Life

Benjamin Franklin was born on January 17, 1706, in Boston in what was then known as the Massachusetts Bay Colony. His father, Josiah Franklin, a soap and candle maker, had 17 children, seven with first wife, Anne Child, and 10 with second wife Abiah Folger. Benjamin was his 15th child and the last son. Despite his success at the Boston Latin School, Ben was removed at 10 to work with his father at candle making, but dipping wax and cutting wicks didn’t fire his imagination. Perhaps to dissuade him from going to sea as one of his brothers had done, Josiah apprenticed Ben at 12 to his brother James at his print shop. Ben took to this like a duck to water, despite his brother’s hard treatment. When James refused to publish any of his brother’s writing, Ben adopted the pseudonym Mrs. Silence Dogood, and “her” 14 imaginative and witty letters were published in his brother’s newspaper, The New England Courant, to the delight of the readership. But James was angry when it was discovered the letters were his brother’s, and Ben abandoned his apprenticeship shortly afterward, escaping to New York, but settling in Philadelphia, which was his home base for the rest of his life. Franklin furthered his education in the printing trade in Philadelphia, lodging at the home of John Read in 1723, where he met and courted Read’s daughter Deborah. Nevertheless, the following year, Franklin left for London under the auspices of Pennsylvania Governor William Keith, but felt duped when letters of introduction never arrived and he was forced to find work at print shops there. Once employed, though, he was able to take full advantage of the city’s pleasures, attending theater, mingling with the populace in coffee houses and continuing his lifelong passion for reading. He also managed to publish his first pamphlet, "A Dissertation upon Liberty and Necessity, Pleasure and Pain." Franklin returned to Philadelphia in 1726 to find that Deborah Read had married. In the next few years he held varied jobs such as bookkeeper, shopkeeper and currency cutter. He also fathered a son, William, out of wedlock during this time. In late 1727, Franklin formed the “Junto,” a social and self-improvement study group for young men, and early the next year was able to establish his own print shop with a partner.

Prominent Citizen

After publishing another pamphlet, "The Nature and Necessity of a Paper Currency," Franklin was able to purchase The Pennsylvania Gazette newspaper from a former boss, and was elected the official printer of Pennsylvania.

He was also able to take Deborah Read as his common-law wife in 1730, after her husband disappeared after stealing a slave. Their first son, Francis, was born in 1732 (although he died four years later of smallpox). Franklin’s prominence and success grew during the 1730s, especially with the publication of Poor Richard’s Almanack at the end of 1732. Franklin amassed real estate and businesses, organized the Union Fire Company to counteract dangerous fire hazards, established a lending library so others could share his passion for reading, and was elected Grand Master of the Pennsylvania Masons, clerk of the state assembly and postmaster of Philadelphia. The 1740s saw Franklin expanding into entrepreneurship with invention of the Franklin stove, and also into scientific pursuits. His pamphlet "A Proposal for Promoting Useful Knowledge" underscored his interests. His beloved daughter Sarah was born in 1743. He became a soldier in the Pennsylvania militia at the age of 42, but his abiding interest in electricity was ignited at this time, too. He conducted the famous kite-and-key experiment in 1752 after some of his theories on electricity were published in England the previous year.

Public Service

Franklin was tapped as a foreign diplomat and represented the Pennsylvania Assembly, and subsequently Massachusetts, Georgia and New Jersey, in England, but he continued to work toward colonial union and in 1766 supported the repeal of the Stamp Act. In 1775, Franklin was elected to the Second Continental Congress and as postmaster general for the colonies, having mapped the postal routes in 1762. And in 1776, he was one of five men to draft the Declaration of Independence. Franklin was also one of the 13 men who drafted the Articles of Confederation.

Later Years

Much has been made of Franklin’s life in Paris as essentially the first U.S. ambassador to France, chiefly his romantic life. Deborah, his wife of 44 years, died in 1774, two years before he accepted the post, and Franklin had a rich romantic life in his nine years abroad. He even proposed marriage, to a widow named Madame Helvetius, at the age of 74, but she rejected him. Franklin was embraced in France as much, if not more, for his intellectual standing in the scientific community and for his wit, as for his status as a political appointee from a fledging country. His reputation facilitated respect and entrees into closed communities, including that of King Louis XVI. And it was his adept diplomacy that led to the peace treaty with England in 1783 and other foreign alliances and trade treaties. After almost a decade in France, Franklin returned to America in 1785. He was elected to represent Pennsylvania at the Constitutional Convention, which drafted and ratified the new U.S Constitution, and participated in electing George Washington as the country’s first president, inaugurated in April 1789. He also served as president of the Pennsylvania Society for Promoting the Abolition of Slavery, wrote many tracts urging the abolition of slavery and petitioned the U.S Congress for it in 1790.

Successes and Failures

With so many of America’s early heroes, successes take the spotlight, while failures are rarely mentioned. But with any great entrepreneur the failures are just paving stones to the triumphs. Franklin himself said, “Do not fear mistakes. You will know failure. Continue to reach out.” He took his own advice. Franklin mapped the Gulf Stream, invented swim fins, the lightning rod and musical instruments, established colleges, and amassed scores of other accomplishments. His self-education earned him honorary degrees from Harvard, Yale, Oxford University in England, and the University of St. Andrews in Scotland. But he also began a magazine that failed, devised a new “scheme” for the alphabet that proposed to eliminate the letters C, J, Q, W, X and Y as redundant, and made disastrous political decisions that involved the leaking of letters, called the “Hutchinson Affair.” He also made an ill-advised recommendation for Pennsylvania’s stamp distribution that caused the public to misconstrue where he stood on American support. His own son William, whom he helped to achieve the governorship of New Jersey, opposed him on the unification of the colonies, which stung Franklin to the point where he mentioned it in his will almost 25 years later. Franklin’s voracious capacity for knowledge, investigation and finding practical solutions to problems was his primary focus, as was his commitment to “doing good,” which led to the concept of paying it forward.

Death and Legacy

Benjamin Franklin died on April 17, 1790, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, at the home of his daughter, Sarah Bache. He was 84, suffered from gout and had complained of ailments for some time, completing the final codicil to his will a little more than a year and a half prior to his death. Franklin had actually written his epitaph when he was 22: The body of B. Franklin, Printer (Like the Cover of an Old Book Its Contents torn Out And Stript of its Lettering and Gilding) Lies Here, Food for Worms. But the Work shall not be Lost; For it will (as he Believ'd) Appear once More In a New and More Elegant Edition Revised and Corrected By the Author. In the end, however, the stone on the grave he shared with his wife read simply, “Benjamin and Deborah Franklin 1790.” The image of Benjamin Franklin that has come down through history, along with the image on the $100 bill, is something of a caricature—a bald man in a frock coat holding a kite string with a key attached. But the scope of things he applied himself to was so broad it seems a shame. Founding universities and libraries, the post office, shaping the foreign policy of the fledgling United States, drafting the Declaration of Independence, publishing newspapers, warming us with the Franklin stove, pioneering advances in science, letting us see with bifocals and, yes, lighting our way with electricity—all from a man who never finished school but shaped his life through abundant reading and experience, a strong moral compass and an unflagging commitment to civic duty, and an overall wit, good humor and integrity. Franklin illumined corners of American life that still have the lingering glow of his attention. He was a true polymath and entrepreneur, which is no doubt why he is often called the First American. Perhaps it is a fitting image after all.

Source : http://www.biography.com/people/benjamin-franklin-9301234?page=3

4:50 PM
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Alexander Graham Bell : Biography

Inventor

Alexander Graham Bell

Alexander Graham Bell : Biography

Alexander Graham Bell was born on March 3, 1847, in Edinburgh, Scotland. His education was largely received through numerous experiments in sound and the furthering of his father’s work on Visible Speech for the deaf. Bell worked with Thomas Watson on the design and patent of the first practical telephone. In all, Bell held 18 patents in his name alone and 12 that he shared with collaborators. He died on August 2, 1922, in Cape Breton Island, Nova Scotia, Canada.

Early Life

Alexander Graham Bell was born Alexander Bell on March 3, 1847, in Edinburgh, Scotland. (He was given the middle name "Graham" when he was 10 years old.) The second son of Alexander Melville Bell and Eliza Grace Symonds Bell, he was named for his paternal grandfather, Alexander Bell. For most of his life, the younger Alexander was known as "Aleck" to family and friends. He had two brothers, Melville James Bell (1845–70) and Edward Charles Bell (1848–67), both of whom died from tuberculosis.

During his youth, Alexander Graham Bell experienced significant influences that would carry into his adult life. One was his hometown of Edinburgh, Scotland, known as the "Athens of the North," for its rich culture of arts and science. Another was his grandfather, Alexander Bell, a well-known professor and teacher of elocution. Alexander's mother also had a profound influence on him, being a proficient pianist despite her deafness. This taught Alexander to look past people's disadvantages and find solutions to help them.

Alexander Graham Bell was homeschooled by his mother, who instilled in him an infinite curiosity about the world around him. He received one year of formal education in a private school and two years at Edinburgh's Royal High School. Though a mediocre student, he displayed an uncommon ability to solve problems. At age 12, while playing with a friend in a grain mill, he noted the slow process of husking the wheat grain. He went home and built a device with rotating paddles with sets of nail brushes that dehusked the wheat. It was his first invention.

Early Attempts to Follow His Passion

Alexander's father, Melville, followed in his father's footsteps, becoming a leading authority on elocution and speech correction. Young Alexander was groomed early to carry on in the family business, but he was ambitious and headstrong, which conflicted with his father's overbearing manner. Then, in 1862, Alexander's grandfather became ill. Seeking to be out of his father's control, Alexander volunteered to care for the elder Bell. The experience profoundly changed him. His grandfather encouraged his interests, and the two developed a close relationship. The experience left him with an appreciation for learning and intellectual pursuits, and transitioned him to manhood.

At 16, Alexander Graham Bell accepted a position at Weston House Academy in Elgin, Scotland, where he taught elocution and music to students, many older than he. At the end of the term, Alexander returned home and joined his father, promoting Melville Bell's technique of Visible Speech, which taught the deaf to align specific phonetic symbols with a particular position of the speech organs (lips, tongue, and palate).

Between 1865 and 1870, there was much change in the Bell household. In 1865, Melville Bell moved the family to London, and Alexander returned to Weston House Academy to teach. In 1867, Alexander's younger brother, Edward, died of tuberculosis. The following year, Alexander rejoined the family and once again became his father's apprentice. He soon assumed full charge of his father's London operations while Melville lectured in America. During this time, Alexander's own health weakened, and in 1870, Alexander's older brother, Melville, Jr., also died of complications from tuberculosis.

On his earlier trip to America, Alexander's father discovered its healthier environment, and after the death of Melville, Jr., decided to move the family there. At first, Alexander resisted the move, for he was beginning to establish himself in London. But realizing his own health was in jeopardy, he relented, and in July 1870, the family settled in Brantford, Ontario, Canada. There, Alexander's health improved, and he set up a workshop to continue his study of the human voice.

Passion for Shaping the Future

In 1871, Melville Bell, Sr. was invited to teach at the Boston School for Deaf Mutes. Because the position conflicted with his lecture tour, he recommended Alexander in his place. The younger Bell quickly accepted. Combining his father's system of Visible Speech and some of his own methods, he achieved remarkable success. Though the school had no funds to hire Bell for another semester, he had fallen in love with the rich intellectual atmosphere of Boston. In 1872, he set out on his own, tutoring deaf children in Boston. His association with two students, George Sanders and Mabel Hubbard, would set him on a new course.

After one of his tutoring sessions with Mabel, Bell shared with her father, Gardiner, his ideas of how several telegraph transmissions might be sent on the same wire if they were transmitted on different harmonic frequencies. Hubbard's interest was piqued. He had been trying to find a way to improve telegraph transmissions, which at the time could carry only one message at a time. Hubbard convinced Thomas Sanders, the father of Bell's other student, George, to help financially back the idea.

Between 1873 and 1874, Alexander Graham Bell spent long days and nights trying to perfect the harmonic telegraph. But his attention became sidetracked with another idea: transmitting the human voice over wires. The diversion frustrated Gardiner Hubbard. He knew another inventor, Elisha Gray, was working on a multiple-signal telegraph. To help Bell refocus his efforts, Hubbard hired Thomas Watson, a skilled electrician. Watson understood how to develop the tools and instruments Bell needed to continue the project. But Watson soon took interest in Bell's idea of voice transmission. Like many inventors before and since, the two men formed a great partnership, with Bell as the ideas man and Watson having the expertise to bring Bell's ideas to reality.

Through 1874 and 1875, Bell and Watson labored on both the harmonic telegraph and a voice transmitting device.

Hubbard insisted that the harmonic telegraph take precedence, but when he discovered that the two men had conceptualized the mechanism for voice transmission, he filed a patent. The idea was protected, for the time being, but the device still had to be developed. On March 10, 1876, Bell and Watson were experimenting in their laboratory. Legend has it that Bell knocked over a container of transmitting fluid and shouted, "Mr. Watson, come here. I want to see you!

" The more likely explanation was that Bell heard a noise over the wire and called to his assistant. In any case, Watson heard Bell's voice through the wire and thus received the first telephone call.

To further promote the idea of the telephone, Bell conducted a series of public demonstrations, ever increasing the distance between the two telephones. At the Centennial Exhibition in Philadelphia, in 1876, Bell demonstrated the telephone to the Emperor of Brazil, Dom Pedro II, who exclaimed, "My God, it talks!" Other demonstrations followed, each at a greater distance than the last. The Bell Telephone Company was organized on July 9, 1877. With each new success, Alexander Graham Bell was moving out of the shadow of his father.

On July 11, 1877, with his notoriety and financial potential increasing, Alexander Graham Bell married Mabel Hubbard, his former student and the daughter of Gardiner Hubbard, his initial financial backer. Over the course of the next year, Alexander's fame grew internationally and he and Mabel traveled to Europe for more demonstrations. While there, the Bells' first child, Elsie May, was born. Upon their return to the United States, Bell was summoned to Washington D.C. to defend his telephone patent from lawsuits by others claiming they had invented the telephone or had conceived of the idea before Bell.

Over the next 18 years, the Bell Telephone Company faced over 550 court challenges, including several that went to the Supreme Court, but none was successful. Despite these patent battles, the company continued to grow. Between the years 1877 and 1886, the number of people in the United States who owned telephones grew to more than 150,000, and during this time, improvements were made on the device, including the addition of a microphone, invented by Thomas Edison, which eliminated the need to shout into the telephone to be heard.

Pursuing His Passion

Despite his success, Alexander Graham Bell was not a businessman. As he became more affluent, he turned over business matters to Hubbard and turned his attention to a wide range of inventions and intellectual pursuits. In 1880, he established the Volta Laboratory, an experimental facility devoted to scientific discovery. There, he developed a metal jacket to assist patients with lung problems, conceptualized the process for producing methane gas from waste material, developed a metal detector to locate bullets in bodies and invented an audiometer to test a person's hearing. He also continued to promote efforts to help the deaf, and in 1890, established the American Association to Promote the Teaching of Speech to the Deaf.

Final Years

In the last 30 years of his life, Bell was involved in a wide range of projects and pursued them at a furious pace. He worked on inventions in flight (the tetrahedral kite), scientific publications (Science magazine), and exploration of the earth (National Geographic magazine).

Alexander Graham Bell died peacefully, with his wife by his side, in Cape Breton Island, Nova Scotia, Canada, on August 2, 1922. The entire telephone system was shut down for one minute in tribute to his life. Within a few months, Mabel also passed away. Alexander Graham Bell's contribution to the modern world and its technologies was enormous.

Source : http://www.biography.com/people/alexander-graham-bell-9205497?page=4

8:10 AM
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Mind Philosopher

Steve Jobs: Biography

Benjamin Franklin : Biography

Alexander Graham Bell : Biography

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