Steve Jobs at HP on his first gig at age 12, after calling Hewlett-Packard President Bill Hewlett: When I was 12 or 13, I wanted to build something and I needed

Steve Jobs at HP on his first gig at age 12, after calling Hewlett-Packard President Bill Hewlett: When I was 12 or 13, I wanted to build something and I needed some parts, so I picked up the phone and called Bill Hewlett—he was listed in the Palo Alto phone book. He answered the phone and he was real nice. He chatted with me for, like, 20 minutes. He didn’t know me at all, but he ended up giving me some parts and he got me a job that summer working at Hewlett- Packard on the line, assembling frequency counters. Assembling may be too strong. I was putting in screws. It didn’t matter; I was in heaven. I remember my first day, expressing my complete enthusiasm and bliss at being at Hewlett-Packard for the summer to my supervisor, a guy named Chris, telling him that my favorite thing in the whole world was electronics. I asked him what his favorite thing to do was and he looked at me and said, “To f*ck!” [Laughs] I learned a lot that summer.