Wozniak will join a handful of tech entrepreneurs who have also been turned into life-size, 3D figures at the well known wax museum, among them Wozniak’s former colleague and friend Steve Jobs, and Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg.
Wozniak was chosen to be the next techie to make the list through a public vote, reports VentureBeat. The other possible candidates included Elon Musk, George Lucas, Google’s Lawrence “Larry” Page, Yahoo’s Marissa Mayer, Jane Metcalfe of Wired Magazine, Frank Oppenheimer of Exploratorium, Marc Benioff of Salesforce, Edwin Catmull of Pixar, and Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg.
Madame Tussauds intends to reveal Wozniak’s figure on stage at the first-ever Silicon Valley Comic Con, due to take place in San Jose, California on March 18-20. The complicated process of creating the figure saw Wozniak attend a private session with a team of sculptors. Wozniak, also known by the nickname Woz, would pose for the artists as they captured everything from his measurements, to his hair and eye colour, in order to create an accurate wax model.
It has taken the sculptors four months to complete the figure, which is reported to be valued at $350,000. Wozniak, who has yet to see the model himself, claims he will probably “have an immense rush of pride and chills,” when he first comes face-to-face with the lifelike recreation.
Steve Wozniak became a Silicon Valley legend after developing the two computers that helped launched Apple in the 1970s, the Apple I and Apple II. Although Wozniak decided to leave his managing responsibilities in 1985, he remains an Apple employee to this day. Since departing, he has worked on several personal projects including CL9 (where he helped build the first universal remote control), and Wheels of Zeus, which developed a wireless GPS technology.
