Steve Jobs once gave away the mouse from his own computer. He didn’t sell it, he didn’t lose it; he buried it on purpose. And for the next three decades, nobody could find it. This isn't a rumor. According to The Aspen Times, the local newspaper that has covered this story since the 1980s, the whole story is well-documented, from the original burial ceremony to the day a TV crew finally dug the capsule back up decades later.
A mouse worth saving for the future
On June 23, 1983, organizers of the Aspen International Design Conference held a ceremony to bury a time capsule on the grounds of the Aspen Music Festival and School. The theme for that particular year's conference was, appropriately, "The Future Isn't What It Used to Be." Steve Jobs was one of the speakers. During his speech, he used a mouse from Apple's then-newly launched Lisa computer, one of the first personal computers with a mouse and interactive on-screen icons, an idea that helped shape modern computing interfaces. According to the Computer History Museum, which holds the original Lisa source code, the computer is often described as one of Apple's most influential failures. As the museum's account explains, the Lisa launched at nearly $10,000, far too expensive for most buyers, but its ideas shaped the Macintosh a year later. After his speech, Jobs dropped that same Lisa mouse into a 13-foot metal tube that organizers were preparing to bury along with items from other attendees. The tube became known as the Aspen Time Tube.
