From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
American engineer (born 1955)
Burrell Smith
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Born
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1955-12-16
)
December 16, 1955
(age 68)
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Nationality
| American
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Occupation
| Computer engineer
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Known for
| Macintosh
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Burrell Carver Smith
(born December 16, 1955) is a retired American computer engineer who created the first
wire wrap
prototype of the
motherboard
for the original
Macintosh
at
Apple Computer
.
[1]
He became Apple employee #282 in February 1979 as an
Apple II
service technician.
[2]
He designed the motherboard for Apple's
LaserWriter
.
Smith was working in Apple's service department when he helped
Bill Atkinson
add more memory to an Apple II computer in an innovative fashion. Atkinson recommended him to
Jef Raskin
, who, along with
Steve Wozniak
, was looking for a hardware engineer for their newly formed
Macintosh
project.
[2]
As a member of the design team,
[3]
Smith prototyped five different motherboards using techniques based on
Programmable Array Logic
(PAL) chips to achieve maximum functionality with a minimal chip count and cost. His signature is molded into the original Macintosh case, along with the signatures of the rest of the Macintosh team.
Smith left the company before the release of Apple's Turbo Mac design platform, with an internal hard drive and a further simplified chipset.
He co-founded
Radius Inc.
Personal life
[
edit
]
Smith is retired and lives in
Palo Alto
.
[4]
He reportedly had
bipolar disorder
during the 1990s.
[5]
[6]
In 1993, he was accused of "breaking windows, throwing a firecracker and leaving letters at the house" of
Steve Jobs
[5]
and the case was dropped when he accepted treatment.
[6]
Actor
Lenny Jacobson
portrayed him in the 2013 film
Jobs
.
References
[
edit
]
External links
[
edit
]
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