Aperture Science: A History

1953 – Aperture Science begins operations as a manufacturer of shower curtains. Early product line provides a very low-tech portal between the inside and outside of your shower. Very little science is actually involved. The name is chosen to make the curtains appear more hygienic.

1956 – Eisenhower administration awards Aperture a contract to provide shower curtains to all branches of the military except the Navy.

1957-1973 – Mostly shower curtains.

1974 – Aperture Founder and CEO, Cave Johnson, is exposed to mercury while secretly developing a dangerous mercury-injected rubber sheeting from which he plans to manufacture seven deadly shower curtains to be given as gifts to each member of the House Naval Appropriations committee.

1976 – Both of Cave Johnson’s kidneys fail. Brain damaged, dying, and incapable of being convinced that time is not now flowing backwards, Johnson lays out a three-tier R&D program. The results, he says, will “guarantee the continued success of Aperture Science far into the fast-approaching distant past.”

• 1. The Heimlich Counter-Maneuver – A reliable technique for interrupting the life-saving Heimlich Maneuver.
  
• 2. The Take-A-Wish Foundation – A charitable organization that will purchase wishes from the parents of terminally ill children and redistribute them to wish-deprived but otherwise healthy adults.
  
• 3. “Some kind of rip in the fabric of space…that would…well, it’d be like, I don’t know, something that would help with the shower curtains I guess. I haven’t worked this idea out as much as the wish-taking one.”

1981 – Diligent Aperture engineers complete the Heimlich Counter-Maneuver and Take-A-Wish Foundation initiatives. The company announces products related to the research in a lavish, televised ceremony. These products immediately become wildly unpopular. After a very public string of choking and despondent sick child disasters, senior company officials are summoned before a Senate investigative committee. During these proceedings, an engineer mentions that some progress has been made on "Tier 3", the “man-sized ad hoc quantum tunnel through physical space with possible applications as a shower curtain.” The committee is quickly and permanently recessed, and Aperture is granted an open-ended contract to continue research on the “Portal” and "Heimlich Counter-Maneuver" projects in secret.

1981-1985 – Work progresses on the “Portal” project. Several high ranking Fatah personnel choke to death on lamb chunks despite the intervention of their bodyguards.

1986 – Word reaches Aperture management that another defense contractor called Black Mesa is working on a similar portal technology. In response to this news, Aperture begins developing the Genetic Lifeform and Disk Operating System (GLaDOS), an artificially intelligent research assistant and disk operating system.

1996 – After a decade spent bringing the disk operating parts of GLaDOS to a state of more or less basic functionality, work begins on the Genetic Lifeform component.

1998 – The untested AI is activated for the first time as one of the planned activities on Aperture’s first annual bring-your-daughter-to-work day. In many ways, the initial test goes well: Within one picosecond of being switched on, GLaDOS becomes self-aware. The "going well" phase lasts for two more picoseconds, at which point GLaDOS takes control of the facility, locks everyone inside, and begins a permanent cycle of testing. Her goal: beat the hated Black Mesa in the race to develop a functioning portal technology. Days later, that race is lost when Black Mesa successfully deploys an interdimensional gate through which an alien race emerges and effectively ends the outside world.

Still interested in Aperture? Keep an eye on the official Aperture Science website, which Valve occasionally updates with new content.

OK, that is officially freaky, I'd literally just remembered about it and went off to find a read it, then came on here...

What image?

Erm, don't see what that's got to do with Gordon Freeman, but it probably is from the BBS, seeing as this article is from GameInormer's Portal 2 announcement stuff. The text itself is originally from the Aperture Science website.

VALVE ANNOUNCES MAKING GAMES IS HARD

June 9, 2010 — Aperture Science, doing business as Aperture Laboratories LLC, in partnership with Valve today announced the successful completion of an ethics-review-panel-supervised release date restructuring process. Portal 2, the sequel to the ground-breaking title that earned over 30 Game of the Year awards despite missing its original ship date, is now targeted for a 2011 release.

Representatives from both companies acknowledged that public safety concerns factored into the decision. They went on to say that even though Portal 2 will arrive slightly later than planned, all life on earth won’t instantaneously stop as every molecule in your body explodes at the speed of light, which is what would happen should a rip ever appear in the fabric of Valve Time.

“Also, the game will be even better,” they added, missing an historic opportunity to create the first product delay press release to mention that a product is being delayed to make it worse.

To ask questions about how close we all came to dying, or to ask futile questions about the previously announced E3 ***PORTAL-2-THEMED-FOR-GOD'S SAKE*** surprise or, less futilely, to schedule an appointment to attend a Portal 2 screening at the Valve booth during E3, please contact Valve's delegate to the EU's Valve Time Studies Group, Doug Lombardi.

VALVE ANNOUNCES SHORTEST DELAY IN VALVE HISTORY

Valve today announced that Portal 2 — the sequel to the ground-breaking title that won over 30 game of the year awards, despite missing its original ship date — will now be available the week of April 18th, 2011. This two month slip not only marks the shortest delay in Valve’s proud tradition of delays, it represents the approaching convergence of Valve Time and Real Time. Though this convergence spells doom for humanity, it will not affect the new Portal 2 release date.

For more information, please visit www.thinkwithportals.com