parts he wanted, and gave him a summer job working for Hewlett
Packard. Jobs recalls:
He was listed in the Palo Alto phone book. He answered the
phone and he was real nice. He chatted with me for, like,
twenty minutes. He didn’t know me at all, but he ended
up giving me some parts, and he got me a job that sum-
mer working at Hewlett-Packard, on the line assembling
frequency counters . . . Well assembling may be too strong.
I was putting in screws. It didn’t matter. I was in heaven. 17
A Business Man
Steve could not ask for donated parts for his next project because
it involved building an illegal device known as a blue box with
Woz. It allowed users to make free long distance telephone calls.
To help finance the project, Jobs took a part-time job at a local
electronics store. He learned a lot about the value of electronic
parts while working there. In fact, he became so knowledge-
able that he started buying underpriced parts at flea markets and
reselling them to his boss at the electronics store for a profit.
This was Jobs’s earliest experience as a businessman, and he
liked it. So, once the two Steves had managed to build one blue
box, Jobs proposed that they build more and sell them at Berkeley
where Woz was attending college. Woz’s original intention was
to build just one blue box, which the boys would use to pull
pranks. In fact, they did have fun with the box. They called
the Ritz Hotel in London and made reservations for dozens of
nonexistent people. Another time, they called the pope at the
Vatican. Although making mischief was enough for Woz, it was
not enough for Jobs. He saw a chance to make money and con-
vinced Woz to take part. Kaplan explains:
Woz . . . liked the intellectual challenge of creating some-
thing and of understanding the way things worked. Jobs, by
contrast, seemed to see electronics as a means to an end . . .
24 Steve Jobs