Rod Holt

Frederick Rodney Holt[1] (born 1934) is an American electrical engineer and political activist. He became the fifth employee of Apple, where he developed the power supply for the 1977 Apple II.

Early life

Holt was born in 1934 to a psychiatry resident father and artist and teacher mother. He became interested in electronics by the age of 14 and taught ham radio courses for Wellesley High School by the age of 16.[2]

In 1952, after graduating from high school, Holt married his high school girlfriend Joanne. He also joined Ohio State University as a math major. He and Joanne had two children, Christine and Cheryl, during this period. Holt later stated that while at OSU, he also "became entranced with motorcycles and opened up my own motorcycle shop. That adventure failed within a year, however, and I then worked in the electronics industry to support my family. I continued to race bikes intermittently for the next twenty years."[2]

Apple Computer

During the early development of the Apple II, Apple Inc.'s co-founder Steve Jobs asked his former boss, Atari's Al Alcorn for help with the power supply. Alcorn redirected Jobs to Holt, who saw himself as "a second-string quarterback" at Atari.[3] He was initially "skeptical of Jobs and of Apple" (Swaine and Freiberger note that Holt "had trouble understanding the West Coast culture that shaped Apple's Founders"),[3] telling Jobs that his rate was $200 per day. Jobs, however, replied that "we can afford you" and Holt joined co-founder and lead designer Steve Wozniak's fledgling Apple II team, in part responding to Alcorn's request to "help the kids out."[3] Holt thus began to work "after hours at Atari on Apple's television interface and power supply."[3] According to Apple's first CEO, Michael ("Scotty") Scott, "One thing Holt has to his credit is that he created the switching power supply that allowed us to do a very lightweight computer compared to everybody else's that used transformers."[5] However, some sources show that over a dozen computer systems and terminals with a switching power supply came out in years prior to the Apple II, including PDP-11/20 minicomputer in 1969, Datapoint 2200 in 1970,[6] IBM 5100 portable computer in 1975, and DECSYSTEM-20 in 1976.[7] Holt later joined Apple full-time[3] as Apple Employee #5.[5]

According to Holt, he was the "Chief Engineer and Vice President of Engineering during most of the reign of Apple II. I am most proud of my contributions to the floppy disk, the switching power supply, and radio interference problems. I received four patents for my work and was ennobled with the title of 'Chief Scientist'—whatever that may be. Amidst all the clamor and confusion of Apple's astonishing growth, my son Alan William was born. Six years later, after working what seemed to be sixteen-hour days and seven-day weeks, I was exiled by new management—the fourth member out of five of the original Apple team to be retired or pushed out."[2]

birth name	Frederick Rodney Holt
birth date	1934 (age 92)
birth place	Boston, Massachusetts, U.S.
alma mater	Ohio State University
occupation	Electrical engineer
known for	Developed the power supply for the Apple II.

Early life

Apple Computer

2013 Jobs film

Further reading

External links

References