Ronald Wayne
Encyclopedia
Ronald Gerald Wayne founded Apple Computer (now Apple Inc.) with Steve Wozniak
Steve Wozniak
Stephen Gary "Woz" Wozniak is an American computer engineer and programmer who founded Apple Computer, Co. with Steve Jobs and Ronald Wayne...

 and the late CEO Steve Jobs
Steve Jobs
Steven Paul Jobs was an American businessman and inventor widely recognized as a charismatic pioneer of the personal computer revolution. He was co-founder, chairman, and chief executive officer of Apple Inc...

 but soon gave up his share of the new company for a total of $2,300.

Biography

Wayne was born in Cleveland, Ohio
Cleveland, Ohio
Cleveland is a city in the U.S. state of Ohio and is the county seat of Cuyahoga County, the most populous county in the state. The city is located in northeastern Ohio on the southern shore of Lake Erie, approximately west of the Pennsylvania border...

, United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

. He worked with Steve Jobs at Atari
Atari
Atari is a corporate and brand name owned by several entities since its inception in 1972. It is currently owned by Atari Interactive, a wholly owned subsidiary of the French publisher Atari, SA . The original Atari, Inc. was founded in 1972 by Nolan Bushnell and Ted Dabney. It was a pioneer in...

 before he, Steve Jobs
Steve Jobs
Steven Paul Jobs was an American businessman and inventor widely recognized as a charismatic pioneer of the personal computer revolution. He was co-founder, chairman, and chief executive officer of Apple Inc...

 and Steve Wozniak
Steve Wozniak
Stephen Gary "Woz" Wozniak is an American computer engineer and programmer who founded Apple Computer, Co. with Steve Jobs and Ronald Wayne...

 founded Apple Computer on April 1, 1976. Serving as the venture's "adult supervision", Wayne drew the first Apple logo, wrote the three men's original partnership agreement, and wrote the Apple I
Apple I
The original Apple Computer, also known retroactively as the Apple I, or Apple-1, is a personal computer released by the Apple Computer Company in 1976. They were designed and hand-built by Steve Wozniak. Wozniak's friend Steve Jobs had the idea of selling the computer...

 manual.

Wayne received a 10% stake in Apple but relinquished his stock for US$800 less than two weeks later, on April 12, 1976. Legally, all members of a partnership are personally responsible for any debts incurred by any partner; unlike Jobs and Wozniak, 21 and 25, Wayne had personal assets that potential creditors could seize. The failure of a slot machine
Slot machine
A slot machine , informally fruit machine , the slots , poker machine or "pokies" or simply slot is a casino gambling machine with three or more reels which spin when a button is pushed...

 company that he had started five years earlier also contributed to his decision to exit the partnership.

Later that year, venture capitalist Arthur Rock
Arthur Rock
Arthur Rock is an American venture capitalist of Silicon Valley, California. He was an early investor in major firms including Intel, Apple Computer, Scientific Data Systems and Teledyne....

 and Mike Markkula
Mike Markkula
Armas Clifford "Mike" Markkula, Jr. is an American entrepreneur who was an angel investor and second CEO of Apple Computer, Inc., providing early critical funding and managerial support...

 helped develop a business plan and convert the partnership to a corporation. Wayne received another check, for $1,500, for his agreement to forfeit any claims against the new company. In its first year of operations (1976), Apple's sales reached US$174,000. In 1977, sales rose to US$2.7 million, in 1978 to US$7.8 million, and in 1980 to US$117 million. By 1982 Apple had a billion dollars in annual sales. He claimed that he did not regret selling the stock as he had made the "best decision with the information available to me at the time."

Wayne also stated that he felt the Apple enterprise "would be successful, but at the same time there would be bumps along the way and I couldn't risk it. I had already had a rather unfortunate business experience before. I was getting too old and those two were whirlwinds. It was like having a tiger by the tail and I couldn't keep up with these guys." Had he kept his 10% stock it would be worth over 35 billion dollars today (incorrectly calculated by Gizmodo
Gizmodo
Gizmodo is a technology weblog about consumer electronics. It is part of the Gawker Media network run by Nick Denton and is known for its up-to-date coverage of the technology industry, along with topics as broad as design; architecture; space and science....

 in August 2011).

After Apple, Wayne resisted Jobs's attempts to recruit him back to Apple, remaining at Atari until 1978 when he joined Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory
Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory
The Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory , just outside Livermore, California, is a Federally Funded Research and Development Center founded by the University of California in 1952...

, and later a Salinas, California
Salinas, California
Salinas is the county seat and the largest municipality of Monterey County, California. Salinas is located east-southeast of the mouth of the Salinas River, at an elevation of about 52 feet above sea level. The population was 150,441 at the 2010 census...

 electronics company. He is retired and sells stamps, rare coins, and gold from his Pahrump, Nevada
Pahrump, Nevada
-Demographics:As of the census of 2000, there were 24,631 people, 10,153 households, and 7,127 families residing in the CDP. The population density was 82.7 people per square mile . There were 11,651 housing units at an average density of 39.1 per square mile...

 home, and had never owned an Apple product until September 5, 2011, when he was given an iPad 2 by Aral Balkan at the Update Conference in Brighton, United Kingdom.

Wayne also ran a stamp shop in Milpitas, California
Milpitas, California
Milpitas is a city in Santa Clara County, California. It is a suburb of the major city of San Jose, California. It is located with San Jose to its south and Fremont to its north, at the eastern end of State Route 237 and generally between Interstates 680 and 880 which run roughly north/south...

 for a short period of time in the late '70s, "Wayne's Philatelics", on Dempsey Road. After a number of break-ins he moved his stamp operations to Nevada. Interestingly, his logo for the business was a wood-cut style design, with a man sitting under an apple tree, with the "Wayne's Philatelics" name written in a flowing ribbon curved around the tree. This particular logo is interesting because it was the original logo he designed for Apple Computer.

He holds a dozen patents but never had enough capital to make money off any of them.

Author

Wayne is planning to publish a memoir titled, Adventures of an Apple Founder, to be initially available exclusively on the Apple iBookstore
IBooks
iBooks is an e-book application by Apple Inc. It was announced in conjunction with the iPad on January 27, 2010, and was released for the iPhone and iPod Touch in mid-2010, as part of the iOS 4 update. At that time, it was described by Apple as being available only in the United States...

, then most major book sellers later in 2011.

Wayne has also written a socio-economic treatise titled "Insolence of Office", which he describes as "Insolence of Office" is also to be released in 2011.

Documentaries

Wayne appeared in the documentary Welcome to Macintosh
Welcome to Macintosh (film)
Welcome to Macintosh is a 2008 documentary film focusing on computer company Apple Inc. and its Macintosh line of computers. The title comes from the original welcome message shown during the start-up of Macintosh computers.-Plot:...

where he describes some of his experiences with Steve Jobs
Steve Jobs
Steven Paul Jobs was an American businessman and inventor widely recognized as a charismatic pioneer of the personal computer revolution. He was co-founder, chairman, and chief executive officer of Apple Inc...

, Steve Wozniak
Steve Wozniak
Stephen Gary "Woz" Wozniak is an American computer engineer and programmer who founded Apple Computer, Co. with Steve Jobs and Ronald Wayne...

, and Apple Computer
Apple Computer
Apple Inc. is an American multinational corporation that designs and markets consumer electronics, computer software, and personal computers. The company's best-known hardware products include the Macintosh line of computers, the iPod, the iPhone and the iPad...

.

Personal life

According to Walter Isaacson
Walter Isaacson
Walter Isaacson is a writer and biographer. He is the President and CEO of the Aspen Institute, a nonpartisan educational and policy studies organization based in Washington, D.C. He has been the Chairman and CEO of CNN and the Managing Editor of TIME...

's biography
Steve Jobs (biography)
Steve Jobs is the authorized biography of Steve Jobs. The biography is written at the request of Jobs by acclaimed biographer Walter Isaacson, a former executive at CNN and Time who has written best-selling biographies about Benjamin Franklin and Albert Einstein.Based on more than forty interviews...

of Steve Jobs, Wayne came out
Coming out
Coming out is a figure of speech for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people's disclosure of their sexual orientation and/or gender identity....

 as gay
Gay
Gay is a word that refers to a homosexual person, especially a homosexual male. For homosexual women the specific term is "lesbian"....

to Jobs shortly after February 1974, while both men were employees at Atari. Jobs later told Isaacson that "It was my first encounter with someone who I knew was gay." Wayne recalled to Isaacson that "Nobody at Atari knew, and I could count on my toes and fingers the number of people I told in my whole life. But I guess it just felt right to tell him, that he would understand, and it didn't have any effect on our relationship."

External links

The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.  The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.
 
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