Gallery: Intimate Photos From the Golden Age of Silicon Valley
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Steve Jobs Pretending to Be Human. Menlo Park, California, 1987. Menuez: "Steve was not the kind of guy who ever seemed to relax. He was usually focused like a laser on the task at hand. So it was surprising to see Steve kicking this beach ball around at a company picnic. He seemed to be having a good time, but it felt more like a performance designed to encourage the team to relax."
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New Employees Are Requested to Wear Balloon Hats. Redwood City, California, 1998. Menuez: "Samir Arora, Founder and CEO of NetObjects (at right in soft focus) is pushing his team in their attempt to 'own' the web page design software space during a staff meeting at company headquarters. New employees were asked to wear balloon hats as a mild hazing ritual."
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Thinking Difficult Thoughts. Mountain View, California, 1988. Menuez: "Much of the arduous work of technology development involves solitary concentration and happens inside people's heads."
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Imagine If You Will. Hannover, Germany, 1993. Menuez: "Backstage before a press briefing, Newton team members Michael Tchao, Nazila Alasti, and Susan Schuman discover that all eight of the prototype Newtons they brought to demonstrate are dead."
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Steve Jobs Returning From a Visit to the New Factory. Fremont, California, 1987. Menuez: "Although Steve could be extremely rude, critical, and occasionally even vindictive, he also was incredibly joyful, with an infectious grin and energy that was irresistible."
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Susan Kare Is Part of Your Daily Life. Sonoma, California, 1987. Menuez: "Susan Kare’s playful icons and user interface design have impacted the daily lives of hundreds of millions of people around the world. Susan was part of the original Mac team and designed the original Mac icons and much of the user interface."
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Unknown Unknowns. Fremont, California. 1990. Menuez: "An engineer at Lam Research labors to solve an electrical connection problem in the assembly of a sophisticated plasma etching tool."
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President Clinton Is Really Smart. Mountain View, California, 1995. Menuez: "During his reelection campaign, President Bill Clinton attended a fundraiser thrown by the top CEOs of Silicon Valley. L. John Doerr (center), interacting with Clinton, helped organize the visit at the home of Regis McKenna."
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The Founders of Adobe Systems Preparing to Release Photoshop. Mountain View, California, 1988. Menuez: "John Warnock and Chuck Geschke (seated at left) confidently ready the launch of Photoshop, a landmark program that would utterly transform photography and the graphic arts."
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John Sculley Masters His Shyness to Meet the Press. Fremont, California, 1990. Menuez: "At the factory in Fremont, Apple CEO John Sculley charms the press. He overcame severe shyness and a stutter to eventually become CEO of Pepsi and was then convinced by Steve Jobs to join Apple in 1983. After forcing Steve out, John grew Apple from $800 million to $8 billion a year in revenue."
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Bill Gates Says No One Should Ever Pay More Than $50 for a Photograph. Laguna Niguel, California, 1992. Menuez: "Microsoft CEO Bill Gates discusses cheap content for the masses and debates with reporters about the long-delayed vaporware upgrade to Windows at the Agenda ’92 Conference."
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Getting With the Program. Seattle, Washington, 1999. Menuez: "Steve Ballmer, Microsoft's senior vice president of systems software, engages with a group of programmers at the company headquarters."
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A Million Lines of Code. Cupertino, California. 1992. Menuez: "Programmer Peter Alley rests during the big push leading up to the announcement of the Apple Newton by John Sculley at the Consumer Electronics Show in Chicago."
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The Newton War Room at Apple Computer. Cupertino, California, 1993. Menuez: "Apple programmer Sarah Clark kept her newborn baby with her at work, almost never leaving the building for two years as the team rushed to finish the software. She pulled curtains over her office so colleagues knew when it was naptime or if she was breast-feeding."
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Bill Joy Is Worried About the Future of the Human Race. Aspen, Colorado, 1998. Menuez: "Legendary programmer and co-founder of Sun Microsystems, Bill Joy, wrote Berkeley Unix while a student at UC Berkeley and helped the US Defense Department with the TCP/IP stack code that allowed email to travel along the path of least resistance in case of nuclear attack."
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Calculated Risk. Northern California, 1993. Menuez: "Apple Newton software engineers defy orders (and gravity) to not risk their lives until the product was done. Their boss, software engineering manager Donna Auguste, was not amused, but understood their need to blow off steam after years of intense work."
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Evidence of Human Activity. Silicon Valley, California. Menuez: "In the maelstrom of Silicon Valley it was relatively rare to find a super neat workspace."
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An Infant at Apple. Cupertino, California, 1993. Menuez: "As the Newton team worked even more hours, including almost every weekend, they began to bring wives, husbands, and children into the Apple offices. That way kids could see their parents in daylight hours."
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End of the Dream. Silicon Valley, 2000. Menuez: "The dot-com bubble collapse was such a slow-motion disaster at first, unfolding hesitantly through late 1999 into 2000, then accelerating with neck-snapping g-force as it spread from local VC’s to Wall Street to the big retirement funds and mom and pop investors. By 2001, trillions of dollars of shareholder value had washed away."
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