History of Aperture Science

1953- Aperture Science begins operations as a manufacturer of shower curtains. Early product line providdes 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 hygenic.

1956- Eisenhower administrator 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 gifts to each member of the House Naval Appropriations comitee.

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-approching distant past.'

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

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 healthy 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- Digilant 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 investigation committee. During these proceedings, an engineer mentions that some progress has been made on Tier 3, the 'man-sized ad hoc quantu 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 lifefirm 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...

Trivia
A rumor about the third tier is related to what happened with the Black Mesa Incident or the Combine coming to Earth.

In Portal 2: Cave Johnson is in a state like GLaDOS, but has gon crazy. This explanes about him getting poisoned with mercury.