Aperture Science History/Notes

[blαh2355]

I pulled this from the Aperture Science website before when you could've logged in... this pretty gives a detailed history of Aperture Science and some details of Portal 2.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

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.

 

1957-1975 - Mostly shower curtains.

 

1978 - 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.

 

1979 - 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 tiered R&D program. The results, he says, will 'guarantee the continued success of Aperture Science far into the fast-approaching distant past.'

 

Tier 1: The Heimlich Counter-Maneuver - A reliable technique for interrupting the life-saving Heimlich Maneuver.

 

Tier 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 health adults.

 

Tier 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 become immediately wildly unpopular. After a string of very public 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 permanently recessed, and Aperture is granted an open-ended contract to secretly continue research on the 'Portal' and Heimlich Counter-Maneuver projects.

 

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.

 

Several Years Later - 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...

Oh yeah, THIS IS SPARTA

[Deacon]

i lol'd

[blαh2355]

i lol'd

>lol'd until choking
>Heimlich maneuver
>Heimlich counter-maneuver
>dead
 

[Cheesicle]

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Apparently, Portal 1 takes place sometime in 2010, which means it is taking place either before or around the time of Half Life 2, as Half Life 1 took place in 'present day' which was 1996 in that case, and Gordon Freeman woke up from a 20 year stasis in Half Life 2. Portal 2 takes place several hundred years after Portal 1, which means centuries after Gordon Freeman and the HL2 Characters have died.

[Don]

In HL2:EP3, the combine will launch some kind of destructive weapon to kill all humans.
That's why earth is so beautiful in Portal 2.

[Frank]

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Apparently, Portal 1 takes place sometime in 2010, which means it is taking place either before or around the time of Half Life 2, as Half Life 1 took place in 'present day' which was 1996 in that case, and Gordon Freeman woke up from a 20 year stasis in Half Life 2. Portal 2 takes place several hundred years after Portal 1, which means centuries after Gordon Freeman and the HL2 Characters have died.

implying Gordon will ever die. Plus, fucking stasis. He could live up to the end of time.

[Rocket50]

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Apparently, Portal 1 takes place sometime in 2010, which means it is taking place either before or around the time of Half Life 2, as Half Life 1 took place in 'present day' which was 1996 in that case, and Gordon Freeman woke up from a 20 year stasis in Half Life 2. Portal 2 takes place several hundred years after Portal 1, which means centuries after Gordon Freeman and the HL2 Characters have died.

How does a metal shed not be totally in ruins after a hundred years of natural weathering

[Dale Feles]

How does a metal shed not be totally in ruins after a hundred years of natural weathering

Realism man, realism.

[blαh2355]

I mean Chell was in the relaxation vault in Portal 1 for 20 years.