Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak will be the next Bay Area Tech Innovator to be immortalized in a wax figure at Madame Tussauds.
Valued at $350,000, Wozniak's wax figure will be placed alongside the wax statues of fellow Apple founder Steve Jobs and Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg.
Wozniak worked with a team of sculptors and artists at Madame Tussauds where he posed to get his measurements taken along with other details such as the color of his eyes and hair in order to create an accurate replica in wax. There were about 350 measurements that were taken during the session, which lasted for more than two hours.
The sculpting process of Wozniak's wax figure had reportedly taken four months to complete. The 5- foot-11 statue was handled by a Madame Tussauds' team of artists in London. The fully finished artwork will be displayed at the San Francisco location of Madame Tussauds, near Fisherman's Wharf.
Wozniak earned the highest number of votes when the public was asked to choose who among the Bay Area tech innovators should be the next figure to be immortalized in wax. Other finalists in the voting include Elon Musk of Tesla and SpaceX, Edwin Catmull of Pixar, Marissa Mayer of Yahoo, Sheryl Sandberg of Facebook, Larry Page of Google, George Lucas of Lucasfilm, Marc Benioff of Salesforce, Jane Metcalfe of Wired Magazine and Frank Oppenheimer of Exploratorium.
Wozniak became one of the prominent figures in Silicon Valley after successfully developing Apple I and Apple II, which paved the way for launching Apple during the 1970s.
In 1985, Wozniak left his managerial post in the company and decided to remain one of Apple's employees. Some of the personal projects he worked on include Wheels of Zeus (wireless GPS technology) and CL9 (the first universal remote control technology).
Wozniak's wax figure will be revealed to the public at the first-ever Silicon Valley Comic Con, which is slated to occur on March 18 to 20 at San Jose, California. When asked how he would feel when he sees his lifelike statue, Wozniak hints at an amalgam of emotions.
"I don't know how I'm gonna feel when I come face to face with it," says Wozniak. "I'm probably gonna be just have an immense rush of pride and maybe even chills and just I'm so delighted to be honored as such."
