Rod Holt

Rod Holt
Born	Frederick Rodney Holt 1934 (age 82–83) Boston, Massachusetts, U.S.
Nationality	American
Alma mater	Ohio State University (undergrad and grad)
Occupation	Engineer, Inventor
Known for	Developed the unique power supply for Apple Inc.'s 1977 Apple II.

Frederick Rodney "Rod" Holt (born 1934) is an American computer engineer and political activist. He is Apple employee #5, and developed the unique power supply for the 1977 Apple II. Actor Ron Eldard portrayed him in the 2013 film, Jobs.

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.

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." By 1958, when he was a grad student at OSU, he also became a political activist. He would later become involved in OSU's Free Speech Movement, served as editor of the Free Speech Press, and reconfigured himself as a socialist.

After graduate school, he became an electrical engineer with the Hickok Electrical Instrument company in Cleveland, Ohio, and later joined Atari as an Analog Engineer.

"Other hobby computers of the day used inefficient power supplies. The Apple II was the first computer ever to use a plastic case. The heat buildup using even my own power supply design (inefficient type) would have been too great. Steve [Jobs] tapped an Atari engineer, Rod Holt, to design a switching power supply that was much more efficient and generated less heat. Rod also keyed us into the fact that the plastic case wouldn't conduct heat well. At this point in time we took pride in being the first computer to use a switching power supply. Steve was proud of the fact that we didn't need a fan and seems to hold to that ideal to this day. By the way, Rod joined us as the 5th of 5 key [Apple Computer] team members for the first couple of years."

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