Steve “Woz” Wozniak—engineer, inventor, prankster, comedian, grade-school teacher, Segway Polo enthusiast, phone phreak, philanthropist, computer hacker, co-founder of Apple Computer and creator of the original Apple computer—treated the Y audience to stories of his youth last night. We knew that Woz was the epicenter of the personal computer revolution and that his projects for the Homebrew Computer Club in the ‘70s effectively changed the world as we know it, but we didn’t know a lot of other things. For instance:

· As a kid, Woz eschewed Hardy Boys books for the less popular Tom Swift science-fiction adventure books.

· Woz’s first homebrewed computer was not the Apple I but the 1971 “Cream Soda Computer"—so named because of the cans of cream soda that fueled its construction.

· As a young phone phreak, Woz once used a blue box to telephone Pope Paul VI. He impersonated Henry Kissinger and got as far as the Pope’s translator.

· Woz loves phone numbers with repeated digits. Previous Woz phone numbers include 996-9999, 255-6666, 353-3333, 354-4444 and 888-8888. The latter phone number closely resembled that of Pan Am Airways and Woz enjoyed booking flights with absurd routes for unsuspecting Pan Am customers who called him by mistake.

· Woz ran San Francisco’s first Dial-a-Joke line.

· The suggested retail price of the first Apple computer was $666.66. Woz liked the repeated digits but neither him nor his partner Steve Jobs realized the price’s resemblance to the Number of the Beast.

· Woz dropped out of college to help start Apple Computer. After the company became wildly successful, Woz went back to school and attended UC Berkeley under an assumed name: Rocky Raccoon Clark.

· Woz carries around a notepad comprised of sheets of uncut $2 bills. The bills are legal tender and he enjoys paying for things with stacks of sheets.

Next up in our Giants of Science series with Robert Krulwich: Francis Collins, director of the National Human Genome Research Institute.