In 1955, a young unmarried graduate student made an impossible decision. She could not raise her newborn son on her own, so she chose to give him up for adoption, hoping he would go to a college-educated family who could give him a better life.
The first family chosen for him backed out at the last moment. They had wanted a girl, not a boy. The baby was rejected before he even left the hospital, and a new family had to be found quickly.
A working-class couple stepped in. The husband was a machinist who never finished high school, and the wife was a bookkeeper. They were not the family his birth mother had pictured, but they promised to send him to college one day, and she agreed to the adoption.
That boy grew up curious, mechanical, and endlessly creative, spending his childhood tinkering in the family garage. As a teenager, he was bold enough to call the CEO of a major electronics company just to ask for spare parts.
That baby boy grew up to be Steve Jobs, co-founder of Apple and one of the most influential figures in the history of technology.
