Apple Marketing hadn’t yet come up with the name iPod the product was known by the code name P68. I was the second software engineer hired for the iPod project when it started in 2001. My boss was told I was working on a special project and not to ask questions. The senior VP passed the request down to the vice president of the iPod Division, who delegated it to the director of iPod Software, who came to see me. I learned that an official at the Department of Energy had contacted Apple’s senior vice president of Hardware, requesting the company’s help in making custom modified iPods.
My job was to provide any help they needed from Apple. But it still had to look and work like a normal iPod. They wanted to add some custom hardware to an iPod and record data from this custom hardware to the iPod’s disk in a way that couldn’t be easily detected. They didn’t actually work for the Department of Energy they worked for a division of Bechtel, a large US defense contractor to the Department of Energy. I signed them in, and we went to a conference room to talk. I’d love to say they wore dark glasses and trench coats and were glancing in window reflections to make sure they hadn’t been tailed, but they were perfectly normal thirty-something engineers. I went downstairs to meet Paul and Matthew, the engineers who would actually build this custom iPod. The next day, the receptionist called to tell me that two men were waiting in the lobby. You’ll help two engineers from the US Department of Energy build a special iPod. Without knocking, the director of iPod Software-my boss’s boss-abruptly entered and closed the door behind him. I was sitting at my desk, writing code for the next year’s iPod.
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