California Picks Steve Jobs to Represent the State on the American Innovation Coin

The American Innovation $1 Coin Program, launched in 2018 by the U.S. Mint, aims to highlight ingenuity in the U.S.A.

California Governor Gavin Newsom has announced that the state has chosen Steve Jobs, Apple co-founder, to represent California on the American Innovation Coin.

The American Innovation $1 Coin Program, launched in 2018 by the U.S. Mint, aims to highlight ingenuity in the U.S.A. Each state, territory, and the District of Columbia can create their own coin recognizing an innovation or innovator from their region, and the coin will be minted by the U.S. Mint. California’s coin will be produced and made available in 2026.

Most of the other states and regions which have so far announced the subject of their coins have chosen a specific invention or innovation, including the polio vaccine, Hubble space telescope, Saturn V rocket, the telephone, international space station and the space shuttle. Other people to have been recognized include astronomer Annie Jump Cannon, civil rights activist Septima Clark, and agricultural scientist George Washington Carver. Other more unusual choices include the Erie canal, Kentucky bluegrass, the Reliance yacht that won the first America's cup, and my personal favorite - Vermont's choice of snowboarding.

This honor for Steve Jobs follows other official recognition's including the award of the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Biden in 2022 and the National Medal of Technology, jointly with Steve Wozniak, presented by President Ronald Reagan in 1985.

The choice of Steve Jobs by California is an interesting one; is Jobs the revolutionary thinker among the Apple co-founders of Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, and Ronald Wayne, or is Steve Wozniak more appropriate for the honor given it was he who had the grasp of technology as opposed to Steve Job's role in supplying the marketing and entrepreneurial side? Perhaps, given Apple was a joint venture, the medal should have had both of them on it. Some commenters have pointed out that Wozniak is still alive, and as it's the norm that you need to be dead to appear on currency and postage stamps, Wozniak is probably happy he's not an obvious choice!

Both Jobs and Wozniak have been selected by public vote as Tech Pioneers to be cast as waxworks by Madame Tussauds in San Francisco, Jobs in 2012 and, as we reported, Woz in 2016. At the unveiling of his effigy Woz quipped:

"I have always wanted to be in a wax museum due to characters we idolize like our superheroes. You live on forever."

This is certainly true of your image being cast in metal on a coin.

The statement from the Governor Newsom announcing the nomination says of Jobs:

"By focusing on who he was innovating for – other people – Jobs was able to use technology to connect people to each other and to the broader world, bringing people onto the same level by providing them with equal access. And that approach was built on a willingness to try new ideas and push the boundaries of what was possible – an approach that embodies the California spirit."

The coin will be available next year.