The Original Macintosh: 35 of 125 Calculator Construction Set Author: Andy Hertzfeld Date: February 1982 Characters: Chris Espinosa, Steve Jobs, Donn Denman Topics: Software Design Summary: Chris tries to make a Steve-approved calculator The Calculator Chris Espinosa was one of Apple's earliest and youngest employees, who started work for the company at the ripe age of 14. He left Apple in 1978 to go to college at UC Berkeley, but he continued to do freelance work during the school year, like writing the Apple II Reference Manual, the replacement for the legendary "Red Book".
In the summer of 1981, Steve Jobs convinced Chris to drop out of school to come work on the Mac team full time, arguing that he could go back to school anytime, but there'd only be one chance to help shape the Macintosh. Chris dropped out of school to become the manager of documentation for the Macintosh, starting in August 1981.
We needed technical documentation right away, since we planned to seed third party developer in only a few months. Since the most important part of the Macintosh software was the Quickdraw graphics package, Chris decided to start with documenting Quickdraw.
Chris wanted to write a demo program using Quickdraw, in order to better understand it. He got excited about the idea of what we called "desk ornaments", which at that point were not implemented yet. He decided to work on a Quickdraw program to draw the calculator.
After playing around for a while, he came up with a calculator that he thought looked pretty good. But the acid test was showing it to Steve Jobs, in his role as our esthetic compass, to see what he thought.
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