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You usually start books like this by talking about your parents: who they were, or what they did for a living before you were born or while you were growing up. But the thing is, I never did know for sure what my dad did for a living. As early as I can remember, my brother, sister, and I all had to grow up with this secret. And as secrets go, oh man, this one was huge. We weren't even allowed to talk about his work or ask questions about it in the house. The conversation was strictly off-limits.
一本书通常都以讲述自己的父母为开篇：他们是谁？以何为生？但对我而言，却并不知道父亲以何为生。从我记事以来，这仿佛是一个天大的秘密，我们甚至不能谈论或是问及他的工作，连谈话都严格受限。
I did know Dad was an engineer, and I knew he worked in the missile program at Lockheed. That much he said, but that was pretty much it. Looking back, I figure that because this was in the late 1950s and early 1960s at the height of the Cold War, when the space program was so hot and top secret and all, probably that's why he couldn't tell me anything more about it. What he worked on, what he did eveiy day at work, he'd say absolutely nothing about. Even up to the day he died, he didn't give so much as a hint.
我知道父亲是一位工程师，也知道他在洛克希德公司（Lockheed）参与导弹项目，但事实并非仅此而已。回想起来，那时正处于20世纪50到60年代，也就是冷战白热化时期，航天计划不仅是热门更是绝密，这大概就是父亲对此绝口不提的原因吧。一直以来父亲只字不提他从事什么，或是每天的工作内容。直到他去世，也未给我们哪怕是一点暗示。
I remember how in 1960, when I was ten, I finally understood why he'd never be able to. He said it was because he was a man of his word. Once, when he was explaining why you should never lie under oath in court, that's what he said: "I'm a man of my word."
我还记得，在1960年当我10岁时，终于理解了父亲为何这样做。因为他说自己是一个守信的人。当他向我们解释为何永远不能在法庭宣誓后撒谎时，说道：“我是一个守信的人。”
Now, on my own, I managed to put together little bits and pieces. I remember seeing NASA-type pictures of rockets, and stuff related to the Polaris missile being shot from submarines or something, but he was just so close mouthed about it, the door slammed there.
现在，我尽可能地把这些记忆碎片拼凑起来。我曾看到过NASA型火箭的图纸，还有一些关于北极星导弹从水下或其他什么地方发射的东西。但父亲守口如瓶，我们的了解也仅此而已。
I tell you this because I'm trying to point out that my dad believed in honesty. Extreme honesty. Extreme ethics, really. That's the biggest thing he taught me. He used to tell me it was worse to lie about doing something bad under oath than it was to actually do something bad, even like murdering someone. That really sunk in. I never lie, even to this day. Not even a little. Unless you count playing pranks on people, which I don't. That's comedy. Entertainment doesn't count. A joke is different from a lie, even if the difference is kind of subtle.
告诉你们这些是想表明我的父亲以诚信为人生信仰。诚实与道德是我从他那里学到的最重要的东西。他曾告诉我，相对于做了坏事甚至谋杀，在宣誓后为所作所为而撒谎更为恶劣。的确如此，直到今天，我都从未撒过谎，哪怕只是一点点。除非算上开玩笑，那是闹着玩的。玩笑不同于谎言，两者间有微妙的差别。
The other thing my dad taught me was a lot about electronics. Boy, do I owe a lot to him for this. He first started telling me things and explaining things about electronics when I was really, really young—before I was even four years old. This is before he had that top secret job at Lockheed, when he worked at Electronic Data Systems in the Los Angeles area. One of my first memories is his taking me to his workplace on a weekend and showing me a few electronic parts, putting them on a table with me so I got to play with them and look at them. I can still picture him standing there working on some kind of equipment. I don't know if he was soldering or what, but I do remember him hooking something up to something else that looked like a little TV set. I now know it was an oscilloscope. And he told me he was trying to get something done, trying to get the picture on the screen with a line (it was a waveform) stable-looking so he could show his boss that his design worked.
父亲还教给我许多电子学相关知识。伙计们，我真要因此而感激他。他第一次向我讲述电子学知识时，我真的非常非常小，甚至还不到4岁。那时他还未在洛克希德开始秘密工作，而是效力于洛杉矶地区“电子数据系统”。我最初的印象是，一个周末他带我到工作的地方，向我展示一些电子零件，让我在桌上摆弄和观察它们。我至今还能在脑海里勾勒出，父亲当时站在那儿钻研某些仪器的画面。我不知道他是在焊接还是在做其他什么，但我清楚地记得，他将一些东西相连从而构成一个有点类似电视机的东西。现在我知道了，那是一个示波器。他告诉我，他正在试图用一根看似稳定的波形线路连上屏幕从而得到图像，这样他就可以向老板展示自己的设计。
And I remember sitting there and being so little, and thinking: Wow, what a great, great world he's living in. I mean, that's all I thought: Wow. For people who know how to do this stuff—how to take these little parts and make them work together to do something—well, these people must be the smartest people in the world. That was really what went through my head, way back then.
我这个小不点坐在那里，想着：哇，爸爸生活在一个多棒的世界里啊！我的意思是：哇！知道如何做这种东西的人——怎样让这些小零件一起工作——大概是世界上最聪明的人了。我想，这才是我那时真正的想法。
Now, I was, of course, too young at that point to decide that I wanted to be an engineer. That came a few years later. I hadn't even been exposed to science fiction or books about inventors yet, but just then, at that moment, I could see right before my eyes that whatever my dad was doing, whatever it was, it was important and good.
当然，那时我还年幼，没有想到去当工程师。这种想法几年后浮出水面。我甚至没有接触过科幻小说或是发明方面的书籍，但就在那一刻，我深刻感受到，无论父亲做的是什么，都是重要和美好的。
- o -
A couple of years later - I was six, maybe seven - I remember Dad demonstrating another piece of equipment for a bunch of people at his company. A big group of people was there. These weren't just people he worked with, but also our whole family and other families, too. I think it was just a drilling machine he was demonstrating.
两三年后，当我六七岁时，父亲为他的一些同事演示了另一件设备。那时真是座无虚席，不仅仅是他的同事，还包括了家人。现在我想，他演示的可能只是台钻床。
And my dad, even though I was just this little kid, told me I would be the one to get to throw the switch to turn it on. He said I had to do it at the exact right time.
即使我那么小，但父亲仍选择让我去拉开机器的开关，并且叮嘱我要在恰当的时间拉动。
I remember worrying about how I would know when the right time was and thinking: Now Now When should I do this Now My dad was busy talking and joking with the families of the guys who worked there, who were going to watch me do it. Then suddenly it felt like the right time. I can't explain why, but I just felt inside it was the right time. So I went ahead and threw the switch.
我一直担心自己怎样才能知道什么时间恰当，并不停想着：是现在吗？现在吗？什么时候我才应该做？现在吗？我的父亲忙于应酬同事及其他人，而这些人都要目睹我所做的一切。突然，我感觉到了“恰当的时间”。虽然理由不明，但直觉让我走上前并拉开了开关。
I heard a lot of laughter, and I didn't know why. Suddenly I realized I had thrown the switch too early. Now that I look back on this, I see this might be the beginning of my shyness, you know, getting butterflies in your stomach because you're afraid of failure when you have to talk or something.
我的举动引起哄堂大笑，而自己却不知道为什么。忽然间，我意识到自己合闸太早。如今回想起来，这正是我最初的害羞情绪。大家都知道，当你讲演或做其他什么时，你心里会因为紧张而七上八下。
Or maybe that was my first prank, but it was definitely unintentional!
或者那是我第一次开玩笑，但绝非故意。
- o -
But there were also lessons from my dad, serious lessons that got me an incredibly early start in engineering. These lessons would always start because I'd ask a question. And I had a lot of questions.
父亲也给我讲课，非常认真地讲课，因此我很早就开始学习工程学，早得难以置信。只要我有疑问，课程便接踵而至，而我总有大堆问题。
Because my dad was an engineer, there were all kinds of interesting things lying around my house. And when you're in a house and there are resistors lying around everywhere, you ask, "What's that What's a resistor" And my dad would always give me an answer, a really good answer even a seven-year-old could understand. He was just an extremely good teacher and communicator.
由于父亲是位工程师，我们家到处都是有趣的东西。当你身处一间到处都是电阻的房子，你总会问：“这是什么？什么是电阻？”我的父亲总会给我一个完美的答案，一个7岁孩子都能懂得的答案。他绝对是一位完美的老师和沟通者。
He never started out by trying to explain from the top down what a resistor is. He started from the beginning, going all the way back to atoms and electrons, neutrons, and protons. He explained what they were and how everything was made from those. I remember we actually spent weeks and weeks talking about different types of atoms and then I learned how electrons can actually flow through things - like wires. Then, finally, he explained to me how the resistors work -not by calculations, because who can do calculations when you're a second grader, but by real commonsense pictures and explanations. You see, he gave me classical electronics training from the beginning. For engineers, there's a point in life when you understand things like how a resistor works. Usually it comes much later for people than it did for me. By the fourth grade, I really did understand things like that.
他从不以复杂的方式解释电阻为何物，而是从最基本的内容开始讲解，回到原子、电子、中子和质子，说明它们是什么以及如何构成万物。我记得我们曾一周接一周地谈论原子的不同种类，然后我学会了电子是怎样通过物体，比如电线。最后，他给我解释了电阻如何工作，不是通过计算而是通过真正常识性的图画及说明。你瞧，从一开始，父亲便给了我电子学的正统培训。对工程师而言，理解电阻如何工作之类的知识至关重要，而我在四年级时便心领神会了。
And my dad was always around to help me understand still more things. Like light. How does a lightbulb work I wanted to know. Not many people my age knew -probably most people who are grown up still don't. But he explained it to me: first howlights are made, then how electrons went through wires, and how those were what made a lightbulb glow. And I wanted to know how, how did it glow So he went back to the beginning, explaining to me how Thomas Edison invented lightbulbs and what he had to figure out to do it. He realized that basically you had to create a vacuum -it had to be a vacuum because if there were oxygen in it, the wire would just burn up when it got hot. So this vacuum (remember, a vacuum has no air in it) is in this little bulb, and the point was to get heat - by moving a lot of electrons through a wire -into it.
我的父亲还帮助我懂得更多知识，比如光，比如电灯如何工作。我对此求知若渴，尽管我的许多同龄人都不知道，甚至大多数成人都不了解。而我的父亲却告诉了我：首先光是如何形成，然后电子怎样穿过电线，以及这些又是怎样让灯发光。我想知道它是怎样发光的，因此父亲从电灯的发明讲起，向我解释了爱迪生如何发明电灯，及其需要的条件。爱迪生认识到首先要创造出真空——必须是真空，因为如果有氧气存在，电线一热便会烧焦。另外一个关键是通过电线输入大量电子而致热。
And the more electrons that go through the wire - that is, the higher the current - the brighter the lightbulb will glow. Cool! I was eight or even younger when I understood this, and knowing it made me feel different from everyone else, different from all the kids I knew. I started to feel as if I knew secrets no one else knew.
通过电线的电子越多，即电流越强，电灯发光则越亮。真酷！我还不到8岁就对此了如指掌，这让我觉得自己与众不同，不同于所有我认识的小孩。我开始觉得自己知道了别人所不知道的奥秘。
I have to point out here that at no time did my dad make a big deal about my progress in electronics. He taught me stuff, sure, but he always acted as if it was just normal for me. By the sixth grade, I was really advanced in math and science, everyone knew it, and I'd been tested for IQ and they told us it was 200-plus. But my dad never acted like this was something he should push me along with. He pulled out a blackboard from time to time, a tiny little blackboard we had in our house on Edmonton Avenue, and when I asked, he would answer anything and make diagrams for it. I remember how he showed me what happened if you put a plus voltage into a transistor and got a minus voltage out the other end of the transistor. There must have been an inverter, a type of logic gate. And he even physically taught me how to make an AND gate and an OR gate out of parts he got -parts called diodes and resistors. And he showed me how they needed a transistor in between to amplify the signal and connect the output of one gate to the input of the other.
在此我还必须告诉大家，对于我在电子学上的进步，父亲心态平和。六年级后，我因擅长数学和理科而闻名，智商测试二百多，父亲却淡然对之。当我们住在埃德蒙顿大道时，他会时不时地拉下小黑板。无论我问什么，他都会回答并画上图表。我仍记得，他向我演示接入晶体管的正压如何从另一端变为负压。根据电路逻辑，其中必有变极器。他甚至言传身教，告诉我如何用他拥有的零件做出与门和或门——那些零件便是二极管和电阻。他还展示了在增强信号和连接输入输出端的时候它们如何加入晶体管。
To this very moment, that is the way every single digital device on the planet works at its most basic level.
那个时候，这是让每一种数字设备以自身最基本的水平运作的方式。
He took the time - a lot of time - to show me those few little things. They were little things to him, even though Fairchild and Texas Instruments had just developed the transistor only a decade earlier.
父亲用了大量的时间告诉我这些小知识。对他而言这的确是些小知识，尽管那时距Fairchild和Texas公司研发出晶体管还不到10年。
It's amazing, really, to think that my dad taught me about transistors back when almost no one saw anything but vacuum tubes. So he was at the top of the state of the art, probably because his secret job put him in touch with such advanced technology. So I ended up being at the state of the art, too.
这真是令人惊奇：当别人看到的还是真空管时，父亲便教给了我晶体管！他处于这个领域的前沿，很有可能是因为他神秘的工作让他一直接触先进科技。因此，后来我也进入了这个领域的前沿。
The way my dad taught me, though, was not to rote-memorize how parts are connected to form a gate, but to learn where the electrons flowed to make the gate do its job. To truly internalize and understand what is going on, not just read stuff off some blueprint or out of some book.
然而，父亲告诉我的方式是：不要死记硬背零件如何形成电路，而是理解电子流动在哪里才形成有用的电路；不要仅仅阅读线路图或是书上的内容，而要真正对此心领神会。
Those lessons he taught me still drive my intelligence and my methods for all the computer designs I do today.
父亲所教我的一切至今让我益智蒙慧，并对我的电脑设计影响至深。
- o -
But even with all of this - all the lessons and explanations a kid could understand - I want to tell you about the single most important lesson he taught me. Because this is what I have always hung on to, more than even the honesty thing. He drilled into me what it means to be an engineer. What I am talking about is what it means to be an engineer's engineer. A serious engineer. I so clearly remember him telling me that engineering was the highest level of importance you could reach in the world, that someone who could make electrical devices that do something good for people takes society to a new level. He told me that as an engineer, you can change your world and change the way of life for lots and lots of people.
我想告诉你们，父亲对我全部教育中最为重要的一课。因为它让我铭记于心，甚至超过对诚实的强调，他让我深深懂得工程师意味着什么，也告诉我如何成为工程师中的工程师。他告诉我，工程学是世界上所能企及的最有价值的一门学问，工程师能通过制造电子设备而造福人类和推动社会。作为一名工程师，你能改变世界，改变许多人的生活方式。
To this day, I still believe engineers are among the key people in the world. And I believe that I will be one forever, and I havededicated my whole life to engineering. I realize that when engineers create something there is often an argument that the creation could be used for bad or good. Like the atomic bomb. My dad had the opinion that change is what moves the world forward and that's the path we're on and basically all change is good. That any device people want is good and should be made and not get stopped by governments or anyone else. And I came to that same view when I was very young, ten or maybe younger. Inside my head - and this is what has really stayed with me - I came to the view that basically, yes, technology is good and not bad.
直到今天，我仍深信工程师是世界上最重要的人群之一。并且，我相信自己将永远是其中一员，而且终身献身于工程学。我意识到，工程师的新发明，通常都伴随着关于其好坏的争论，比如原子弹。父亲认为改变让世界进步，这是必经之路，并且，基本上所有改变都是有益的。任何人们需要的设备都是必要的，应该制造，并不为政府或他人所羁绊。在我10岁或者还更小时，我便有着相同看法。在我心灵深处，一直认为：是的，基本上，科技是百益而无一害。
People argue about this all the time, but I have no doubts about it at all. I believe technology moves us forward. Always.
人们一直对此争论不休，但我却从不怀疑。我深信科技推动进步，永远如此。
- o -
Now, you've got to realize that, electronics-wise, 1950s Northern California was another world compared to what things are like now. For example, where I was growing up, everybody who owned TVs and radios literally had to replace the bad vacuum tubes inside them themselves. Grocery stores had these giant tube testers that everyone in the family -kids, parents, everyone -knew how to use. I mean, we knew that when the TV went bad you opened it up and then took all the tubes to the grocery store, where you'd insert them in that machine. There was a meter on it that would tell you if the tube was good, weak, or bad. You could buy replacements for the bad tubes right there in the grocery store and take them home to reinsert in your TV.
现在，你已意识到电子学的英明神武了吧。与20世纪50年代相比，加州北部已面目全非。例如，在我长大的地方，每个拥有电视机和收音机的人必须自己替换掉用坏的真空管。杂货店有巨大的电子管试验装置，而无论父母还是孩子，家中的每一个人都懂得如何使用。也就是，我们知道，当电视坏了，你会打开它，将所有电子管带到杂货店，再插入试验装置。装置上的仪器会显示电子管是好是坏。你会在杂货店买下好的电子管来替代坏的，再回家装入你的电视。
In case you're too young to remember, this was a clunky solution, but it worked pretty well. The only bad part was the human effort this required - taking out the tubes, testing each of them, putting them back in. So much work! I used to look at those tubes, trying to take apart what they were made of. They were just little filaments - they ran hot and could burn out like a lightbulb. It was as simple as that. I remember wondering what it would take to build a tube that wouldn't burn out, or a TV thatdidn't need tubes to work at all. How much easier they would be for people.
如果因你那时太小而不记得，那么我告诉你，那是一个很好但却繁琐的方法。唯一的缺点是要求人们做太多事情：拿出管子，测试它们，再放回去。如此繁琐！我曾观察这些管子，拆开它们以便研究由何构成。它们就是些小灯丝，它们也可发热，或像灯泡一样地熄灭，如此简单而已。我当时想：怎样才能创造出永不熄灭的电子管，或是根本不需要电子管的电视？这样的话，人们的生活会多么简单啊。
That's how I was, how I've always been - and still am, it seems. I've always had this technical side and then this human side. For instance, I remember telling my dad when I was ten that when I grew up, I wanted to be an engineer like him, but I also remember saying I wanted to be a fifth-grade teacher, like Miss Skrak at my school. Combining the human and the technical turned out to be the main thing for me later on. I mean, even when it came down to something like building a computer, I remember watching all those geeks who just wanted to do the technical side, to just put some chips together so the design worked.
从过去到现在乃至将来，我似乎一直如此。我既有技术的一面，又有着人性化的一面。我10岁时，曾告诉父亲，我长大后要成为和他一样的工程师，但我也曾说，想成为像思可可小姐那样的五年级老师。此后这两方面的确成了我主要从事的工作。也说是说，即使在开发电脑时，我仍不忘叮嘱那些只顾技术的“傻瓜”综合考虑，因此设计才得以成功。
But I wanted to put chips together like an artist, better than anyone else could and in a way that would be the absolute most usable by humans. That was my goal when I built the first computer, the one that later became the Apple I. It was the first computer to use a keyboard so you could type onto it, and the first to use a screen you could look at. The idea of usable technology was something that was kind of born in my head as a kid, when I had this fantasy that I could someday build machines people could use. And it happened!
但我希望自己的思想如同艺术家般天马行空，他人远远不及，并且对人类做出最有用的贡献。这就是我创造第一台电脑的目的，后来它成为了苹果Ⅰ。这是第一台使用键盘和屏幕的电脑，这样大家就可以打字并观看了。当我还是小孩子时，就萌发了创造出造福人类的科技的想法。我怀揣梦想，想着人们有一天会使用我创造的机器，而这一切就真的发生了！
Anyway, anyone you meet who knows me will tell you that that is exactly me - an engineer, but an engineer who worries about people a lot.
不管怎样，当你遇到任何熟识我的人，他们都会告诉你，我的确如此——一位工程师，一位非常体贴人们的工程师。
- o -
According to my birth certificate, my full name is Stephan Gary Wozniak, born in 1950 to my dad, Francis Jacob Wozniak (everyone called him Jerry), and to my mom, Margaret Louise Wozniak. My mother said she meant to name me Stephen with an e, but the birth certificate was wrong. So Stephen with an e is what I go by now.
根据出生证明，我的全名是史迪芬·加利·沃兹尼亚克（StephanGaryWozniak），生于1950年。我的父亲是弗朗西斯·雅各布·沃兹尼亚克（FrancisJacobWozniak，大家都叫他Jerry），我的母亲叫玛格丽特·露易丝·沃兹尼亚克（MargaretLouiseWozniak）。我母亲曾说她本想给我取名为斯蒂芬尼（Stephen），中间为e，但出生证明却弄错了。因此，我至今使用的仍是斯蒂芬尼这个名字。
My dad was from Michigan; Mom was from Washington State. My dad and his brother, who later became a Catholic priest, were raised in a strict and pious Catholic household. But by the timemy parents had me - I'm the oldest of three -my dad had rebelled against that: the Catholicism, I mean. So I never got any exposure to religion. Church, mass, communion. What is that Seriously, I couldn't tell you.
父亲是密歇根州人，而母亲却来自华盛顿。父亲出身于一个严格而虔诚的天主教家庭，他的兄弟后来成为了一位天主教牧师。但是，自从父母生下我——我是他们第一个孩子——我的父亲便背离了天主教教义，因此我从无宗教信仰。教堂、聚会、团体是些什么？说真的，我讲不清。
But from the earliest age, I had a lot of conversations with my parents about social policies and how things work. As for religion, if I asked, my dad would say, no, no, he was scientific. Science was the religion. We had discussions about science and truth and honesty, the first discussions of many that formed my values. And what he told me was, he just wanted things to be testable. He thought that to see if something is true, the most important thing is to run experiments, to see what the truth is, and then you call it real. You don't just read something in a book or hear someone saying something and just believe it, not ever.
然而，从小我就与父母经常谈论社会政策以及事物如何运作。如果我问及宗教，父亲便会回答：不，不，我是科学家，科学也是一种信仰。我们谈论科学、真相和诚实，这些形成了我的价值观。父亲所告诉我的是，他只希望事情能得以证实。他认为，一件事是真是假，最重要是经过实验得出真相，然后才可盖棺定论，绝不能仅仅阅读一些书籍或是听人施教便信以为真。
I eventually came to conclude that, yes, I believed the same thing. And at a super young age, I knew 1 would do something scientific when I grew up, too.
最终我也断定，是的，我也这样认为。而在那么小的年龄，我就知道了，长在后也会走上科学之路。
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I forgot to mention before that my dad was kind of famous, in his own way. He was a really successful football player at Caltech. People used to tell me all the time that they used to go to the games just to see Jerry Wozniak play. And my mom, she was great to me and my younger brother and sister. She'd be home when we came home from school, and she was always really pleasant and funny and interesting and gave us stuff to eat that was special to us. And was she ever funny! I think it was from her -definitely not my dad - that I got this sense of humor of mine. The pranks I like to play, and the jokes. I have been playing pranks on people for years and years. And my mom, well, I guess you could thank her for that. She just has this wonderful sense of humor.
我忘记告诉你们，我的父亲在那之前就小有名气。他是加州理工学院一位成功的橄榄球运动员。经常有人告诉我，他们那时去看球，为的是看杰瑞·沃兹尼亚克。我们的母亲很棒，她时常在家里等候我们放学回家。她令人愉快，为人风趣而幽默。我想，我的幽默感得益于她，而绝非父亲。我喜欢开玩笑，多年以来，我总是与人们开玩笑。我想大家应该因此而感谢我的母亲，只有她才拥有这样美妙无比的幽默感。
When I was in the sixth grade in 1962, my mother was big into Republican politics. She was a huge supporter of Richard Nixon, who was running for governor of California, and there was someevent in San Jose where Nixon was speaking and she said, "Oh, Steve, why don't you come along" And she had a plan, a joke I would do. She wanted me to meet him and tell him, opening up a piece of paper, that I represented the Ham Radio Operators of Serra School, and that our group unanimously supported Richard Nixon's election for governor. The joke was, I was the only sixth- grade ham radio operator in the school, probably in the whole state. But I did it. I walked up to Nixon and presented the paper, which we literally wrote with a crayon just before leaving home.
在1962年，当我六年级时，我母亲成为共和党的重要人物。她是理查德·尼克松的强力支持者，而此时尼克松正竞选加州州长。曾有一次尼克松在圣·荷塞演讲，母亲说，“嗨，斯蒂夫（Steve），你也来吧。”她想让我和尼克松开一个玩笑，希望我见到他时，打开一页纸，然后告诉他，我代表塞拉（Serra）学校所有业余无线电操作员，我们小组的所有成员都支持尼克松成为州长。搞笑的是，我这名六年级学生，是学校唯一的业余无线电操作员，也许是整个州唯一一名，但我仍然这样做了。我走上前，向尼克松展示了这一页纸，而我们在离家前才用蜡笔刚刚写好。
1 said, "I have something for you." Nixon was really gracious, I thought. He seemed kind, and he smiled at me. He signed one of my schoolbooks I had with me, and even gave me the pen he signed it with. About twenty flashbulbs went off, and I ended up on the front page of the San Jose Mercury News for this. Me! The only ham radio operator at Serra School and probably the youngest one in the whole state, representing a club made up of nobody but me, presenting a fake certificate like it was the real thing. And everyone believed it. Wow!
我说：“我有礼物给您。”我认为尼克松平易近人。他很友好，并对我微笑。他在我的教科书上签名，并把签名的笔送给了我。无数闪光灯后，我竟因此成为《圣·荷塞水星报》（TheSanJoseMercuryNews）的头条。我！塞拉学校的唯一业余无线电操作员，也可能是整个州最小的一名，代表着仅由自己组成的所谓团体，以假乱真地展示了一份假证书。每个人都信以为真。天啊！
So it was funny and everything, but something bugged me, and I'm going to tell you that it still bugs me to this day. Why did nobody get the joke Doesn't anybody check facts The newspaper cutline said something like, "Sixth grader Steve Wozniak represents a school group that's for Nixon." They didn't get that there was no school group, that it was all a joke my mom made up. It made me think that you could tell a newspaperperson or a politician anything, and they would just believe you. That shocked me - this was a joke they took for a fact without even thinking twice about it. I learned then that you can tell people things - crazy jokes and stories - and people will usually believe them.
一切都很好笑。但我认为，至今有些事仍引人深思。为什么没有人发现那只是个玩笑？无人查证吗？报纸对照片附简短说明：“六年级生斯蒂夫·沃兹尼亚克代表学校团体，表示支持尼克松。”他们并不知道并没有这个学校团体，那只是我妈妈开的一个玩笑。这件事让我觉得，你可以告诉记者或政治家任何事，他们都将深信不疑。不过一个玩笑，甚至想都没想便信以为真了，这真让我震惊。从那时起，我懂得了，你可告诉人们诸多事情，比如疯狂的玩笑和故事，而他们通常都会相信。
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We spent most of my early years in Southern California, where my dad worked as an engineer at various companies before the secret job at Lockheed.
我们一家最初在南加州生活，那时父亲在各种各样的公司充当工程师，还未在洛克希德公司开始秘密工作。
But where I really grew up was Sunnyvale, right in the heart of what everyone now calls Silicon Valley. Back then, it was called Santa Clara Valley I moved there when I was seven. It was all just really agricultural. It was totally different from the way it is now. There were fruit orchards everywhere. Our street, Edmonton Avenue, was just a short one-block street bordered by fruit orchards on three of four sides. So pretty much anywhere you drove on your bike you'd end up in an apricot, cherry, or plum orchard. And I especially remember the apricots. Every house on my block had a bunch of apricot trees in their yard -our house had seven of them - and in the fall the apricots would get all soft and kind of splatter wherever they landed. You can imagine what great projectile weapons they made.
但我真正成长的地方却是在阳光谷（Sunnyvale），也就是如今闻名于世的硅谷的中心。那时，它叫做圣塔·克拉拉（SantaClara）谷。我7岁时移居此处。那时它还是农村，到处都是果园，与今天有着天壤之别。我们所在的埃德蒙顿大道不过是一个小街区，而且三面都紧邻果园。无论你骑车前往哪里，都几乎要止步于一棵杏树、樱桃树或是李子园，而我对杏树记忆尤深。这个街区的每家住户的果园里都有一些杏树——我们家就有7棵。当秋天来临，杏子噼噼啪啪应声落地。你可以想象它们有着多好的发射武器呀。
When I think of that street, looking back, I think it was the most beautiful place you could imagine growing up. It wasn't as crowded back then, and boy, was it easy to get around. It was as moderate of temperature as anywhere else you could find. In fact, right around the time I moved there - this was 1958 - I remember my mother showing me national articles declaring it to be the best climate in America. And as I said, since the whole place had barely been developed, there were huge orchards every which way you went.
当我回想起这一条街，我想，它是你所能想象到的成长时最美丽的地方。当时那里并不拥挤，但相聚在一起却也容易。那里气温恰到好处。事实上，我们移居那里正是1958年。我记得妈妈还曾给我看一篇文章，宣称那里有着美国最宜人的气候。正如我所描述，由于整个地区从未开发，无论你身居何处，都有着大片果园。
Edmonton Avenue was actually a small Eichler subdivision - Eichler homes of that period were kind of famous for being architecturally interesting homes in middle price ranges. They stand out as special homes to this day. And the families in them were a lot like mine -middle class, with dads commuting to work at the new electronics and engineering companies starting up, and moms at home. Because of that, and the fact that a bunch of my friends could pretty easily get electronics parts and all kinds of wires from our dads' garages or company warehouses, I thought of us as the Electronics Kids. We grew up playing with radios and walkie-talkies and weird-looking antennas on our roofs. We played baseball and ran around, too. A lot.
埃德蒙顿大道实际是埃其勒（Eichler）的一个小分支，而那一时期的埃其勒家园则在中产阶级中以农庄家园而闻名。如今，它们显得独具一格。在那里生活的家庭则与我们家相似——中产阶级，父亲效力于新型电子或工程公司，母亲则为家庭主妇。正因如此，我的一群朋友都能轻松从父亲的车库或是公司的仓库得到一些电子零件和各种各样的电线，我想，我们就是一群电子小孩。我们从小便与无线电和对讲机相伴，屋顶上总是有着怪模怪样的天线，不过我们也常常玩棒球和四处嘻哈打闹。
I remember when I was in the fifth grade I was really athletic. I was always being told I was the best runner, the top athlete in school, the best baseball player, and I was really popular because of all that. But electronics was really my life, and I loved devising all kinds of projects with the Electronics Kids.
我五年级时擅长运动。人们总说我是学校顶级田径运动员以及最佳棒球手。我也因此声名鹊起，但电子学才是我生命中的真谛。我迷恋着与电子小孩们一起设计出各种各样的东西。
In fourth grade for Christmas, I got the most amazing gift from my parents. It was an electronics hobby kit, and it had all these great switches and wires and lights. I learned so much playing with that stuff. And it was because of that kit that I was able to do the neatest things with the Electronics Kids. I was the key kid in designing a house-to-house intercom connecting about six of our houses.
四年级时过圣诞节，父母给了我一份让人惊喜的礼物——电子业余爱好者工具包，包含了一系列开关、电线和光源。我受益颇多。拥有这个工具包后，我能与电子小孩们最好地完成杰作。我们在彼此的家里安装了对话装置，并独立设计了连接，整个工程中我显得出类拔萃。
The first thing to do was to get the equipment we needed. The main thing was wire. But where were a bunch of kids supposed to get yards and yards of wire And how we got it -it was just unbelievable. One of the guys in my group, Bill Werner, literally walked up to a phone guy and asked him if he could have some telephone wire. He'd seen long spools of it in the guy's truck, so he just asked him for one of them. I don't know why, but the telephone guy just gave it to him, saying, "Here's a cord, kid."
第一件事就是要准备好我们需要的器材，主要是电线。但一群小孩子要到哪儿找到数十码的电线呢？怎么找到呢，真是令人难以置信。我们其中一员比尔·沃纳径直走向一位电话维修工，希望他能给我们一些电话线。比尔看到那人的卡车上有着长长的数卷线，所以他想要一条。不知为何，那位电话维修工竟给了他一整卷：“孩子，把这卷线都拿去吧。”
What Bill got was a spool of wire about a foot in diameter. It was a lot, a whole lot, of wire. It was two-wire cable, solid copper wire inside of plastic insulation in the colors white and brown, twisted every inch or so to keep the two wires together and to minimize electrical noise from being picked up. Think of it as a plus wire and a minus wire. If some electrical interference is strong, it gets picked up equally by the plus and minus wires due to their being twisted. The point is that there is never a single wire that is always slightly closer to the interference signal. The plus and minus wires serve to cancel out the interference. You get as much minus as plus. That's how telephone cords work, as I found out from this. It is also where the term "twisted-pair" comes from.
比尔找到了直经约一英尺的一圈电线，这对我们来说绰绰有余。那是种包含两条线的电缆，白色和褐色的绝缘体包裹着铜线，每隔大约一英寸就将两线缠绕，这样就可将接听时的电流声最小化。它们是一条正极线和一条负极线，当电干扰很强时，由于两条线缠为一体，所以都会受到影响。关键是没有一条单独的更加接近干扰信号的线。正负线可以抵消干扰，因为正负刚好为零。在此我发现这就是电话线的原理，而双绞线形式也来源于此。
And so then I figured out what to do with all this cord, designing on paper really careful lines with my different-colored pens. And I figured out where the switches would be, and how we would connect carbon microphones (that's how microphones were back then) and buzzers and lights so we kids wouldn't be waking our parents up with loud noises that would let them know what was up. We had to make sure we could do this in absolute secrecy, and that we kids could turn the buzzers off at night so we could wake ourselves up just by the light.
然后我就决定好如何处理这些电线，并用各种颜色的笔仔细在纸上绘出我设计的线路。我想好开关应该在哪里，我们如何将碳性扩音器（那时麦克风就是如此）、蜂鸣器和发光体连接起来。有了发光体，我们这群孩子就不会吵到父母，避免让他们发现我们的计划。我们要确保一切秘密进行，晚上我们会关闭振动器，仅仅靠发光体来提醒。
Once we finished the design, the bunch of us rode our bikes down to Sunnyvale Electronics, the local store and hangout for kids like us. We bought all this neat stuff, the microphones and the buzzers and the switches, you name it.
一旦完成设计，我们马上就骑车到太阳谷电子城、本地商店和那些与我们志趣相投的孩子的小窝。我们买下了所有这些小玩意：也就是你们所说的麦克风、蜂鸣器和开关。
The next thing we did was connect the wire between all the houses. There were these wooden fences that separated all the houses on our short little street, and we just went along the fence in broad daylight, stringing this wire along and stapling it in. You know, it's possible that putting staples into wire would short it out. We were so lucky that didn't happen. And we stapled that wire all the way up the block -from one of my friends' houses to mine, and then I set up my switch box, drilled some holes in it, mounted some switches, and you know what It worked! So then we had a house-to-house secret intercom system so we could talk to each other in the middle of the night.
下一件事便是将房子之间的线连接起来。在我们这条小街上，住户之间都以木栅栏相隔。我们在大白天里，沿线将它们用U型钉固定好。众所周知，用U型钉固定金属丝易引发短路，但我们没有遇到。从朋友家到我家，我们这一路都以U型钉固定电线。然后我做好开关盒子，在上面钻些孔，再装好开关。知道吗？它就开始工作了！就这样，我们有了房子间的秘密对话系统，大家可以在半夜互相谈话了。
We were about eleven or twelve then, so I'm not trying to convince you this was a professional modern engineering system, but it really worked. It was just a tremendous success for me.
那时，我们只有十一二岁，因此我并没有努力让你们相信那是个现代化的专业工程系统，但它的确能够运作。对我而言，这是个巨大成功。
In the beginning, we used it to call each other, I guess it was just so cool to be able to talk to each other. We'd call each other up and say things like, "Hey, this is cool! Can you hear me" Or, "Hey, press your call button, let's see if it works." Or, "Try my buzzer out, give me a call." That was about the first week or two, and after that we started using it as a way to sneak out at night.It didn't ring in this case, it had to quietly buzz, and it had to work on lights. So Bill Werner or one of the other guys would signal me, or I would signal one of them, and we had a code that would mean different things. I can't tell you how many nights I woke up to that buzzer or a light thinking: Oh boy, we're going out tonight!
开始时，我们用它来呼叫对方。我想能这样与彼此通话真是酷到极点。我们呼叫彼此，然后会说：“嗨，这真酷！能听到吗？”或是：“嗨，按下你的呼叫键，看看行不行。”再或是：“试试我的蜂鸣器，呼叫我。”最初一两周就是这样。之后我们就开始用它进行秘密活动。这时，我们就将蜂鸣器转为发光体。这样比尔或是其他孩子就可以和我相互发信号，我们有着不同含义的暗号。不计其数的夜里，我因嗡嗡声和光亮而醒来，想着：朋友们，今晚我们要外出！
We were a group of kids who loved climbing out our windows and sneaking out at night. Maybe it was just to talk, or go out and ride bikes, or sometimes it was to toilet-paper people's houses. Usually girls' houses. Ha. We'd go out in the middle of the night and say things to each other like, "Does anyone know anyone who has a house we should toilet-paper tonight" To tell you the truth, I never had any idea who we should toilet-paper - I never thought like that - but the other guys usually had someone in mind.
我们这群孩子都喜欢在夜里从窗户溜出去。也许只是想一起说说话，或是出去骑自行车，或是有时想要把手纸扔进人们的屋子——通常都是女孩子的房间。我们会在午夜溜出去，然后有着如下对话：“有人知道今晚要把手纸扔进谁的屋子吗？”说实话，我从不知道我们应该扔进谁的屋子，也从未这样想过，但其他伙伴的心中总有一个对象。
And then we would go to the all-night store and try to buy, like, twenty-five rolls of toilet paper. I remember the clerk saying, "Hey, why do I get the feeling that this isn't to be used for its intended purpose" I laughed and told him that we all had diarrhea. And he sold it to us.
之后，我们则会到夜店买些东西，比如25卷手纸。我还记得店员说：“嘿，为什么我总感觉你们不是把它用于正道呢？”我笑着告诉他，我们都腹泻了，他才卖给我们。