August 17, 1986: Luxo Jr Premiers!

When Steve Jobs was still an Apple employee he stayed very busy. Besides fathering the Mac and supervising the horrible Apple III he made recommendations as to the direction of the company. One of the things that Steve thought Apple should do was to purchase a company that would be later known as Pixar.

Apple declined. After Steve's ouster he put his money where his mouth was and purchased Pixar from George Lucas. The plan was to sell high-end digital processing computers. Steve Jobs called it a hobby.

The hardware side of the equation never took off. Pixar's computers were far too hard to use and far too expensive to appeal to any but the most brainy users. Still it was necessary to show off the machines capabilities and a completely digital short called Luxor Jr. fit the bill. The movie that started the transition of Pixar from a computer manufacturer to a digital content producer (and later Disney buyout) debuted at Siggraph this month in 1986.