The Macintosh team put its signatures inside the case mold
Andy Hertzfeld’s account describes a 1982 signing party whose signatures became part of the Macintosh case tooling. Customers usually never saw the credits inside.
The Macintosh came with credits you could miss for the entire life of the computer. In Hertzfeld’s firsthand account, Steve Jobs proposed engraving the team’s signatures into the hard tool used to mold the plastic case.
Around 35 people signed a sheet of drafting paper at the February 10, 1982 party. The names would appear inside manufactured cases. As Hertzfeld writes, “Most customers would never see them.”
The guest list became a small argument about permanence. The team wanted to draw a cutoff at the party, yet more contributors’ signatures eventually found their way in. Later manufacturing changes obscured or removed names. Hertzfeld is uncertain which model lost the last signatures, so that part remains uncertain here, too.
The interesting artifact may be the next surviving case someone documents: which names survived that particular trip through manufacturing?