You never know what you'll turn up at a thrift shop. It could be sweet old glassware, vintage T-shirts, or, if you are Reddit user vadermeer, a bunch of internal memos from Apple from the late 1970s.

The Reddit post says vadermeer found them while perusing a Goodwill in Seattle and noticing the Apple logo on letterhead sticking out of a book. It turned out that the stack of papers came from the files of Jack MacDonald, manages of system software for Apple II and III. Vadermeer continues:

They tell the story of project "SSAFE" or "Software Security from Apples Friends and Enemies." This was a proposal to bring disk copy protection in-house to sell as a service to outside developers. Inter-office memos, meeting notes and progress reports all give a good idea of what a project lifecycle was like. Different schemes and levels of protection are considered, as well as implementation primarily on the Apple II+ and the upcoming SARA (The Apple ///) and Lisa computers.

The 116 pages get deep into engineering jargon of a bygone era, and you can dig deep into them. Even a cursory look is a fascinating view of the early days of Apple.

Source: Reddit via Gizmodo

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Andrew's from Nebraska. His work has also appeared in Discover, The Awl, Scientific American, Mental Floss, Playboy, and elsewhere. He lives in Brooklyn with two cats and a snake.