How did we get to the age of smartphones, ereaders, laptops, and crazy touchscreen displays? Gizmodo covers Steve Wozniak's recent presentation of nine key gadgets that have deeply influenced the tech God's work. A few highlights below; click through for the full survey.
George Stibitz's 1936 calculator made of scrapped relays, equipped to add two binary digits. Wozniak: "We wouldn't have our iPhones today, if we didn't start out with stuff like this."
Hard to imagine, but this giant contraption is the world's first disk drive, furnished with 50 24-inch disks stacked parallel. It spins at 1,200 rpm and can hold 5 megabytes of information.
The Nova Minicomputer was the first computer small enough to fit in the home. As a young kid, Wozniak was inspired to make one of his own: "My dad asked, how are you going to do that? One of those computers costs as much as a house. I said, 'I'll live in an apartment.'"
**Want more Woz enlightenment? Check out his recent tour of the Computer History Museum's first permanent exhibit, Revolution: The First 2000 Years of Computing (opening January 13th, 2011).
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