Daily Weird News Report
Before Steve Jobs helped build Apple, he was a 13-year-old student explaining semiconductor technology with plywood, diagrams and a wooden model.
The project, titled “What is the SCR?”, was created while Jobs attended Cupertino Jr. High in 1968. Its three-panel display described the silicon-controlled rectifier and included test circuits, diagrams, written explanations and a wooden representation of a semiconductor. A 10-page accompanying report identifies the author as “Steve Jobs, Science, Mrs. Yakel, Feb. 29, 1968.”
According to Boing Boing, Jobs left the project at his family home rather than taking it with him. After his father, Paul Jobs, died in 1993, some of Steve Jobs’ belongings were still at the house in Los Altos. Jobs’ stepbrother, John Chovanec, reportedly asked him several times to collect them. When Chovanec eventually said he would keep the items himself, Jobs responded that he did not want to be asked about them again.
Chovanec later retained the science project, which has now reportedly sold for $34,375. The source identifies the project’s image as coming from RR Auctions.
The sale adds an unusual early artifact to a group of Jobs-related items previously sold by Chovanec. Those included posters, magazines, bow ties and a desk. Among the reported prices were $659,900 for a 1977 Apple Computer poster, $254,375 for an Apple–1 Byte Shop wooden case owned by Jobs, and $113,580 for the bow ties.
Unlike those later Apple-era objects, the science project comes from Jobs’ school years, before the company that made him famous existed. Its survival appears to have depended on a simple decision: Jobs chose not to retrieve an old school project, and his stepbrother decided to keep it.
