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WEKU
WEKU
Alina Hartounian

A new generation is uncovering the tiny doodles left by engineers on old microchips

Kenton Smith designs circuit boards and has long been fascinated by computers. He was examining chips a few years ago when he found one smiling back up at him. (Courtesy of Kenton Smith)

An owl. A sharky looking bullet. The Hindu deity Ganesh. The Yin and Yang sign. All painstakingly selected and etched onto a microchip that measures about an inch square. Each microscopic silicon doodle was the handiwork of engineers at Qualcomm Incorporated, a San Diego-based company that creates wireless technology-related products and services. The engineers slipped the drawings into Qualcomm's Q1650 data decoder with care not to disturb any of the chip's functions.

They were purposeless etchings, never meant to be uncovered.

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