Now known as Cupertino Middle School, Steve Jobs attended this school when it was Cupertino Junior High. Santa Clara county was in the middle of a transformation into what is now known as Silicon Valley. Engineers from Hewlett-Packard and Shockley Semiconductor Company lived in the area, and Jobs was interested in the gadgetry of their garages.
As a boy, his father introduced him to Heathkits, a type of engineering-toy kit for children. This led to Jobs viewing the world in a different way.
As he put it in 1995 Smithsonian interview: "It gave one a understanding of what was inside a finished product and how it worked because it would include a theory of operation but maybe even more importantly it gave one the sense that one could build the things that one saw around oneself in the universe. These things were not mysteries anymore."
