OK, A New Size TV

Ten years ago I was on a mailing list for PowerBook users. Steve Wozniak was on the list too and I noticed a very odd phrase in his .sig file: “OK, a new size TV.”

I got to wondering what the hell it meant and I didn’t want to email Woz directly because a) he’s busy and I didn’t want to bother him and b) I wanted to figure it out myself in case there was a chance of Valuable Prizes. My first thought was that the phrase was either a telephone alphanumeric or a line from a Tom Swift book – both of which figure prominently in Woz lore. The telephone number idea didn’t really work in a meaningful way and I got as far as one Swift book when one day I wondered if it was a transposition code. I wrote the letters out as OKANEWSIZETV and in a jump of mental sartori I realized that I could use the letters to spell STEVEWOZNIAK. Blame it on a healthy Scrabble appetite.

I emailed Woz and soon got a reply back congratulating me for finding the anagram. Last night at his talk/book signing at Book Soup, I mentioned the anagram story and asked him if his .sig file still has the phrase (it doesn’t). The Valuable Prize, of course, is getting a “you did well in figuring it out” congrats from Woz himself.