This is the Apple Macintosh SE computer.
It was released in 1987.
Every Apple Macintosh SE computer contains electronics, and inside those electronics is computer code. This code is permanent. It cannot be erased or changed. It was encoded inside the electronics by Apple back when the computer was built in 1987.
Recently, some of the people over at nycresistor.com were examining this 25-year-old code when, suddenly, they found something peculiar. Something unexpected.
What they discovered was a large amount of "non-code" hidden inside the regular computer code. This mysterious data didn't belong. It wasn't computer code, but it also didn't seem to be just random data either.
So, they began to piece together these extra bits of information, and soon they uncovered what appeared to be a hidden message inside the code. Naturally, they set to work trying to unscramble the secret message.
And this is what they uncovered.
They saw what appeared to be some sort of image data that was obviously a picture of people.
After further investigation, they were able to decode the scrambled mess above and turn it into a full image. They also discovered that the image was accompanied by a hidden message which read “Thu, Nov 20, 1986“
It was obviously an image of people, but who were they?
The digital archeologists decided to keep digging.
And they found more hidden images embedded in the circuitry of the old Apple computer.
What they had uncovered was an Easter Egg, placed by the Apple programming team who - twenty five years ago - built the Apple Macintosh SE. This team of programmers and engineers cleverly found spare space inside the memory of the Apple Macintosh SE to permanently encode their own images.
Pretty brilliant.
Bravo, 1986 Apple Programming Team, bravo.
Share This Article
