Burrell Smith

Burrell Carver Smith (born December 16, 1955) is an American engineer who, while working at Apple Computer, designed the motherboard (digital circuit board) for the original Macintosh. He was Apple employee #282, and was hired in February 1979, initially as an Apple II service technician.[1] He also designed the motherboard for Apple's LaserWriter.

For the Texas politician, see Burrell P. Smith.
Burrell Smith
Born (1955-12-16) December 16, 1955
NationalityAmerican
OccupationEngineer, Inventor
Known forDesigned the circuit board for the original Macintosh.

Burrell was working in Apple's service department when he helped Bill Atkinson add more memory to an Apple II computer in an innovative fashion. Bill recommended him to Jef Raskin, who was looking for a hardware engineer to help him with his newly formed Macintosh project.[1] As a member of the design team,[2] Burrell designed five different motherboards during the course of Macintosh development, all of which used techniques based on Programmable Array Logic (PAL) chips to achieve maximum functionality with a minimal chip count.

Burrell left the company before releasing Apple's "Turbo Mac" design platform, which included an internal hard drive and a further simplified chipset.

He was later a co-founder of Radius Inc..

Personal life

Smith is retired and living in Palo Alto.[3]

He reportedly suffered from schizophrenia during the 1990s.[4][5] In 1993 he was accused of breaking windows, throwing a firecracker and leaving letters at the house of Steve Jobs.[4] Actor Lenny Jacobson portrayed him in the 2013 film Jobs.

References
  1. Hertzfeld, Andy (November 1979). "We'll See About That". Retrieved March 10, 2019.
  2. Smith, Burrell C. (February 1984). "Macintosh System Architecture". BYTE. p. 32. Retrieved 22 October 2013.
  3. Inside the Mac Revolution - Wired - 16 December 2004
  4. "Former Apple Designer Charged with Harassing Steve Jobs". AP News. June 8, 1993. Retrieved October 1, 2018.
  5. Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson, page xv.


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