Skunkworks At Apple -- The Graphing Calculator Story

avitzur writes with a link to the story behind the Macintosh Graphing Calculator. An excerpt from this strange account: "It's midnight. I've been working sixteen hours a day, seven days a week. I'm not being paid. In fact, my project was canceled six months ago, so I'm evading security, sneaking into Apple Computer's main offices in the heart of Silicon Valley, doing clandestine volunteer work for an eight-billion-dollar corporation."

Comments

I Was able to get the first page

[Anonymous Coward]

before the server burned up:

The Graphing Calculator Story

Pacific Tech's Graphing Calculator has a long history. I began the work in 1985 while in school. That became Milo, and later became part of FrameMaker. Over the last twenty years, many people have contributed to it. Graphing Calculator 1.0, which Apple bundled with the original PowerPC computers, originated under unique circumstances.

I used to be a contractor for Apple, working on a secret project. Unfortunately, the computer we were building never saw the light of day. The project was so plagued by politics and ego that when the engineers requested technical oversight, our manager hired a psychologist instead. In August 1993, the project was canceled. A year of my work evaporated, my contract ended, and I was unemployed.

I was frustrated by all the wasted effort, so I decided to uncancel my small part of the project. I had been paid to do a job, and I wanted to finish it. My electronic badge still opened Apple's doors, so I just kept showing up.

Great Story but...

[speedplane]

Great Story, but I have no sympathy for big profit hungry coporations like Apple. They can make their own graphing calculator

The Irony

[Deltaspectre]

He made the monitor burst into flames? Well he just upped the ante by writing that... he burst the PacificT server into flames! (I know it wasn't his fault for the monitor, but I couldn't resist :D)