Stories say that
when the Macintosh was complete, there was a big party at Steve Jobs' place. He
made the team that worked on the machine sign a piece of paper. The piece of
paper became the model for a metal plate that would go inside every Macintosh
computer.
It's kind of a
strange thing to sign the inside of a computer, especially one that was not
really user-serviceable. For Jobs, the
original Macintosh was not just a computer; it was a piece of art. It was the
first mainstream computer to have a graphical user interface, and the team had
employed a number of people who had artistic qualities as well as technical
ones. As all great
artists sign their work, Jobs thought, so should the Mac team sign the piece of
art computer they had made.
In the tradition
of artists throughout history, those proud iconoclasts at Apple who created the
original Macintosh signed their creations for posterity. Inscribed into the
inside rear panel case mold for the 128k, 512k and Mac Plus are the signatures
of Steven Jobs, Bill Atkinson, Andy Hertzfeld, Bruce Horn, Jef Raskin and the
rest of the historic team.
The whole story is
at Andy Hertzfeld’s blog Folklore, which tells the story of the creation of the
Macintosh via recollections from the original participants.
