What the future looked like for Apple in its early days
Steve Wozniak's dad recalled believing Apple founders 'might even make $1 million on this someday'
Steve Wozniak's dad was right, but also wrong when he predicted the future success that Apple was looking at.
And he'd been watching the company grow since its early days, when Steve Wozniak and Steve Jobs were doing some of their work in a garage.
"It was interesting to see it develop," said Jerry Wozniak, in an interview that aired on CBC Radio's Sunday Morning in November of 1987.
"First, there was virtually nothing in the garage. Then there was a work bench. And then a couple of oscilloscopes were parked on top of the work bench. And every time I went over there, I would see more things."
He recalled that he eventually said: "Gee, you might even make $1 million on this someday."
From $1 million to $1 trillion
That's where Jerry Wozniak was both right and wrong: Not only did his son and his son's friend Steve Jobs become wealthy, Apple would eventually grow to become the first American company to be valued at $1 trillion on the stock market.
Steve Wozniak had founded the company with Jobs and Ronald Wayne — an investor who left the company shortly after helping to found it — in 1976. (The document detailing the founders' partnership agreement would one day sell for more than $1 million at auction.)
As Apple grew, its financial needs grew more complex and in 1980, the company went public.
Margaret Wozniak remembered that being a time when she realized just how big her son's company had become.
"The real, real feeling came when they decided to go public and the newspapers, that was all you could read about — the public offering of Apple," she said.
"And by then, I had my own Apple stock that my son had given me. And my husband had his and my daughter and my other son and everything. And to actually watch that day when it did go public and the realization, finally, dawn as to what the future might be."
