
Case in point: At 12, Jobs wanted to build a frequency counter, but he didn't have the parts. Ever sensible, he suspected that Bill Hewlett, then the CEO of HP, might have some extras. And so, with the bizarre confidence of an 8th grader, he found Hewlett's number in the telephone book and called it.
"He answered the phone and he was real nice," Jobs recalled in a 1985 Playboy interview. After a 20 minute chat, Hewlett agreed to give Jobs the parts — and he also offered him a summer job at HP, assembling frequency counters. "Assembling may be too strong," Jobs corrected himself. "I was putting in screws."