Parents, convinced your child is a budding genius? Then be sure to save everything they make because maybe someday you’ll be able to auction it off for big bucks. As proof, a science project Apple co-founder Steve Jobs built as an eighth grader recently sold at auction for $34,375.
It was part of an auction with other Apple memorabilia, like an Apple-1 computer and an Apple Computer business card signed by Jobs.
Steve Jobs science project sold for big bucks
Steve Jobs’ eighth-grade science project, “What is the Silicon-Controlled Rectifier?” was built in 1968 while he attended Cupertino Junior High School. The 32.5-inch-wide plywood display includes three sections explaining how a silicon-controlled rectifier, or SCR, works. This is a solid-state semiconductor device also known as a thyristor.
The center of the display contains two working circuits. One demonstrates the basic properties of an SCR while the other shows how the semiconductor could be used for applications such as motor-speed control and light dimming. A wooden model illustrates the device’s alternating layers of P- and N-type semiconductor material.
The project also includes a 10-page report typed by the 13-year-old Jobs. Its title page is dated February 29, 1968, and identifies the project as his science assignment for teacher Mrs. Yakel.
Jobs included hand-drawn circuit diagrams and an explanation of how the SCR differs from a conventional rectifier.
And in a particularly Jobs-like touch, he left instructions for the science fair judges. A note tells them how to operate the second circuit and twice reminds them to unplug it afterward.
Most families would have pitched this out at the end of the school year, but for some reason the project remained at the Jobs family home in Los Altos for decades. Jobs repeatedly declined opportunities to take the project back, eventually telling John Chovanec, his stepbrother, that he could keep it.
There’s no record on what grade Jobs received on the science project, but it just sold for $34,375, well above the auction estimate, which seems like top marks for a 58-year-old school assignment.
From science fair to Apple CEO
The project offers a glimpse of Steve Jobs as a teenager, years before he met Steve Wozniak and they co-founded Apple. It shows that Jobs’ fascination with electronics started young.
Steve Jurvetson, who examined the project for the auction, notes that Jobs reportedly called Hewlett-Packard co-founder Bill Hewlett at age 12 to ask for parts for a school project. Jurvetson believes “What is the Silicon-Controlled Rectifier?” may be that project, although that connection can’t be definitively established.
More Apple memorabilia at auction
The science project was part of RR Auction’s Steve Jobs & the Computer Revolution: The Apple 50th Anniversary Auction Part Two.
Other notable Jobs items were also part. A Macintosh 512K that Jobs gave to his father sold for $32,333, while a Jobs-signed 1976 Apple Computer check fetched $53,594.
The auction’s top item was a restored Apple-1 computer that sold for $499,363. This is housed in a modified Smith-Corona Electra 120 typewriter case, and includes Apple manuals and BASIC programming cassettes.
