The time Steve Wozniak was sent to juvenile detention for making a hoax bomb...

[PoliticAverse]

Excerpted from the book Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson:

Woz became more of a loner when the boys his age began going out with girls and partying, endeavors that he found far more complex than designing circuits. “Where before I was popular and riding bikes and everything, suddenly I was socially shut out,” he recalled. “It seemed like nobody spoke to me for the longest time.” He found an outlet by playing juvenile pranks. In twelfth grade he built an electronic metronome—one of those tick-tick-tick devices that keep time in music class—and realized it sounded like a bomb. So he took the labels off some big batteries, taped them together, and put it in a school locker; he rigged it to start ticking faster when the locker opened. Later that day he got called to the principal’s office. He thought it was because he had won, yet again, the school’s top math prize. Instead he was confronted by the police. The principal had been summoned when the device was found, bravely ran onto the football field clutching it to his chest, and pulled the wires off. Woz tried and failed to suppress his laughter. He actually got sent to the juvenile detention center, where he spent the night. It was a memorable experience. He taught the other prisoners how to disconnect the wires leading to the ceiling fans and connect them to the bars so people got shocked when touching them.

Wozniak's facebook post on the incident:
https://www.facebook.com/stevewoz/posts/10153764415701282?pnref=story

[DRoseDARs]

1. I hope you're not trying to draw a parallel between Woz and Ahmed...

Wozniak committed a deliberate act of prankery, which nowadays would likely have him up on federal charges. He admits it was meant to scare as the real thing. It wasn't cute then, it isn't cute now.



This kid built a clock. Maintained that it was a clock. It was proven to be a clock. He wasn't seeking to harm or scare a damned soul. Was still punished for being not-White.

[TexasProgresive]

2. And Ahmed's clock looked like a clock not like a bomb

[pnwmom]

3. To people afraid of circuit boards it looked like a bomb. n/t

[truebluegreen]

4. They didn't think it was a bomb.

Or they would have evacuated the school and called the bomb squad.

[pnwmom]

8. Correct. Their excuse is they thought it was a "hoax bomb" -- something intended

to look like a bomb.

[truebluegreen]

11. They need to realize it looks like the inside

of every appliance with a timer, from dishwashers to stoves to radios to DVRs. What it didn't look like was a bomb, since those require explosives even more than wiring and circuit boards.

[TexasProgresive]

17. There was nothing that looked an explosive device

No pipes, no sticks of dynamite, not detonators, no bomb- just a simple digital clock.

[hobbit709]

5. I didn't know circuit boards exploded.

Considering I've worked on them for 50 years. I've charred a couple with a short circuit but never had one go boom.

[pnwmom]

9. Remember when the MIT student was arrested for bringing a circuit board

to Logan airport when he went there to pick up a friend?

[hobbit709]

10. Anyone that paranoid and afraid needs to be severely whomped with the clue by four.

[IDemo]

13. Every electronics tech knows

That circuits function because of the smoke they contain. If you apply power and let the smoke out, they won't work anymore.

[hobbit709]

14. That's why we call it the smoke test.

When the smoke clears you figure out where you screwed up.

[TexasProgresive]

19. The closest I ever saw was in an R&D lab

At the work station next to mine they were building a prototype plotter that used 4' wide paper that would run back and forth and multiple pens in the other axis. Stepper motors were controlled by large Darlington pair power transistors. to balance the pair a .1 Ohm 50 resister was between them. Something went haywire in the programing which put one pair fighting another.

I was deep into my own project when I heard a rifle shot to my right. One terminal of the resister broke free and shot straight towards me trailing the resistance wire. Maybe that's where they got the idea for wire guided anti-aircraft missiles .

[WillowTree]

16. You think this would look like a clock to most people?

This is Ahmed's clock and, truthfully, if he's shown it to me it's unlikely that "clock" would have been the first thing that came to my mind. Or the fiftieth. Can't say that I would have thought "bomb", either, but this does not in any way resemble the device residing on my nightstand.

[link:|

[kcr]

21. It might not be visible on your monitor

But I can make out the area where the digital numbers would be when it is turned on, but it is faint. Of course it doesn't look like a clock you would buy at Target, but nothing made by a 14 year old kid would. It could just as easily be a homemade soft serve ice cream machine

[Facility Inspector]

6. jesus christ

when I was kid, we built actual bombs to blow shit up with.

There was no shortage of dangerous "play" activities back then.

[bigwillq]

12. Life was so much better then.

[Facility Inspector]

18. Yes indeed

yes indeed

[gollygee]

7. So that actually meets the definition of a hoax

He tried to make people think it was a bomb. Ahmed said at all times that it was a clock and never tried to get anyone to think it was a bomb. The adult police officers tried to brow beat him into saying he intended people to think it was a bomb so they could get him in juvenile detention, but he never tried to fool anyone into thinking he had a bomb.

[WinkyDink]

15. Very true. HOWEVER, at least some did not believe him.

[TexasProgresive]

20. Didn't believe or just wanted to punish him for his name and appearance. n/t