In his youth, Cave Johnson became a
successful business entrepreneur. In 1943
he founded Aperture Fixtures, a shower
curtain developer and manufacturer. Much
of Johnson's early success came from
Aperture Fixtures and with the company
developing high-tech shower curtains for
most branches of the United States
Military as well as the public,
Johnson soon became a billionaire. Making
use of his new wealth, in 1944, Johnson
purchased a huge salt mine in Upper
Michigan,
whose tunnels extended over four
kilometres below the surface. Here, the
main Aperture Fixtures facility was
constructed in the underground caverns.
Following this, in 1947, Johnson decided
to take a more broad scientific approach
to Aperture Fixtures and promptly
renamed the company Aperture Science.
Johnson began to focus on experimental
physics as a new direction for the
company
and although Johnson was well known for
his unorthodox approach to science,  Aperture Science
received an award for best
new science company the same year. By the
1950s, Aperture Science was prospering.
Within the Aperture Science Enrichment
Center, Johnson took an active role in a
company's testing of products, making
voice announcements and pre-recorded
messages to address the test subjects
that consisted of specially selected
astronauts, olympians and war heroes.
Johnson was aided by his assistant,
Carolyn during this time who remained
loyal to him for decades to come.
By this time, Aperture was in the process
of developing the quantum tunneling
device and various prototypes were
utilized in the many test chambers
rapidly constructed in Test Shaft
09 and beyond. Everything seemed
to be working in his favour.
However, in the 1960s, Aperture's financial
boom period had past and with countless
products stuck in the testing phase as
well as many being pulled from the
shelves for violating health and safety
regulations.
Aperture was beginning to struggle. In 1961,
Johnson ordered the lower
areas of Test Shaft 09 to be sealed off to
hide the highly unethical experiments
Aperture had been conducting. In 1968,
Aperture Science was involved in
U.S Senate hearings regarding astronauts
going missing following their
participation in testing. Later the same
year, Aperture was declared bankrupt. As a
result the company could no longer
afford esteemed members of society for
testing, and instead, resorted to
collecting homeless people from the
street. These subjects were offered
$60.00 for their services and offered an
additional $60 if the subjects would
allow themselves to be disassembled and
then reassembled in the name of science.
Johnson was quite bitter about Aperture's
bankruptcy and did not attempt
to hide his dislike for the homeless
people he was forced to hire. He blamed
Black Mesa for Aperture's financial
troubles claiming that the rival company
was stealing their ideas but he could
not come up with the support he needed for these accusations and while Black Mesa
continued to flourish, Aperture declined.
By October 1976, Johnson had Apperture
branch out in its selection of
"low-risk" test subjects to include child
orphans, psychiatric patients, and the
elderly. He then laid out a three-tier
plan for the future of the company. The
Heimlich Counter-Maneuver, the Take-A-
Wish foundation, and most notably the
Portal project which gives birth to the
development of the Aperture Science
handheld portal device also known as the
ASHPD. Testing the portal project
called for the construction of the
Enrichment Center, a large area of the
Aperture Laboratories underground,
consisting of test chambers and offices
where the test subjects tested the ASHPD.
By the 1980s, Aperture remained in
financial turmoil. Desperate for a
successful new product, in 1981, Johnson
purchased approximately seventy million
dollars worth of moon rocks for use in
further mobility gel development despite
not having nearly enough to cover the
costs as he was told that he could
barely afford $7 worth of
moon rocks, let alone 70 million.
Upon discovering that the moon dust
served as a remarkable portal conductor,
Johnson took an active role in its
implementation into conversion gel.
However,
during the development of the conversion gel,
johnson contracted a severe illness as
a result of his prolonged exposure to
the moon dust, which slowly but severely
damaged his lungs and cause both of his
kidneys to fail.
In response to Aperture's continued
struggle for test subjects amidst financial
turmoil, Johnson made testing mandatory
for all employees. He stated that this
dramatically raised the quality of
test subjects but dramatically reduced
the employee retention. As a result, he
finally moved to phase out human testing.
During this time, Johnson continued to
make pre-recorded messages over the
intercom system, however, few were on the
subject of testing and instead addressed
employees about the future of the
company,
many having Johnson raging over his
imminent demise. Desperate to cheat
death, in 1982, Johnson ordered his
engineers and technicians to begin
research and development on a computer
system that could store his
consciousness, however should the system
be completed after his death, Johnson
ordered that his ever loyal assistant,
Carolyn, would succeed him as CEO of
Aperture and have her consciousness
uploaded instead, regardless of any
protests that she might have. Later in 1982,
Johnson died while the AI technology
was still in the research phase. In 1986,
Aperture Science began to hear of a
similar portal technology being
developed by Black Mesa. To counter this,
construction of the first Genetic
Lifeform and Disk operating System also
known as GLaDOS began in Aperture
Laboratories with the aim to accelerate
the portal project based off of the
Artificial Intelligence research started
years before. 11 years later in 1997,
the construction of GLaDOS
was near completion. As a fail-safe, the
Aperture Science "red phone" plan was
implemented in the event that GLaDOS became
sentient and dangerous. This required an
employee to sit by a red phone
in the entrance hall of the central AI
chamber. Carolyn's memories are uploaded
to the system shortly after this
following Cave Johnson's orders. It is
presumed that she died while merging
with GLaDOS, although this is not
documented. A year later in 1998, GLaDOS
was activated but her memories of being
Carolyn were suppressed or locked away in
hidden files and as a result, she
attempted to kill everyone within 1/16
of a picosecond
after activation. She was rapidly turned
off again several times by Aperture
technicians. despite this it didn't stop
them trying to activate her. Undaunted,
the scientists began attempts to alter
GLaDOS' personality and curb her
murderous tendencies by adding various
personality cores to her system. At a
later point in GLaDos' construction, Doug
Rattmann, an Aperture Science employee
went to see his colleague Henry while he
was designing a morality core for GLaDOS.
Doug asked him what it was, to which Henry
answered that it was the latest AI
inhibition technology, that it would act
on GLaDOS as her conscience. Rattman
believe it was insufficient to stop
their murderous intentions arguing about
you can always ignore your conscience.
Sometime later that year, GLaDOS was
activated on Aperture Science's first
annual bring-your-daughter-to-work day
which ended in an unspecified disaster.
Shortly after this disaster, GLaDOS was
fitted with the morality core. Eventually,
GLaDOS claimed to have lost all interest
in killing, now only craving science and
wanted to study an experiment with
consciousness. She announced that she
wanted to perform an experiment on the
company's bring-your-daughter-to-work
day using cats and boxes. She claimed
that she would have all the necessary
materials; all she still needed was a
lesson neurotoxin.
The scientists agreed reluctantly
figuring it would be fine as long as it
was for science. In May, possibly of 2003,
GLaDOS was activated as one of the
planned activities on Aperture's bring
your daughter to work day. A young girl
called Chell took part in this
as she was a daughter of one of the
employees there. GLaDOS became hostile
once more and within two Pico seconds,
she had locked down the inside facility,
trapping all inside and flooding the
facility with the neurotoxin she requested
for her experiment. GLaDOS then began a
permanent testing cycle using the
captive Aperture employees, aiming to beat
Black Mesa in the race for the Portal
technology. She effectively lost this
race on May 16th to Black Mesa, although,
their technology started an invasion of
the planet. Meanwhile, the number of Aperture
employees dwindled through the
ensuring weeks of testing. The last
surviving employee, Doug Rattmann,
managed to avoid captivity as a result
of his paranoia and schizophrenia.
Rattmann's schizophrenia caused him to
consider the companion cube as his
consciousness which allowed him to
navigate through the facility safely,
avoiding the turrets that GLaDOS had
placed for him. He got a hunch about a
test subject,
Chell, who he thought might make a
difference. He made his way to the file
room and looked at her file. It said that
she should never be tested, as she is
abnormally stubborn and never gives up,
ever. Convinced that she was the one he
needed to stop GLaDOS, keep put her name
to the top of the test subject list so
that she would be the first to be picked
in the next test.
Rattmann spent the next several months
surviving in the test chambers and
maintenance areas of Aperture. Having
only two antipsychotic pills left, he
kept them for the day
the GLaDOS would wake Chell.
Consequently, he began to lose his sanity
as his schizophrenia completely
took over. He spent hours scribbling on
walls, painting murals, graffiti, and arrows
and hints for the day Chell would wake up
and try to escape. He became more
obsessed with his companion cube, his
source of advice and logic. In 2010, Chell
is awakened in her relaxation vault. Here,
the events of Portal take place. Chell
is guided through the Aperture facility
by GLaDOS, utilising the completed
Aperture Science handheld portal device.
Chell finds the facility showing clear
signs of decay and neglect, with GLaDOS
showing signs of instability. Chell later
comes across hidden alcoves in the
chamber walls, finding the desperate
messages written previously by Doug
Rattmann. Rattmann observes from a distance
taking his last two pills he was saving
for this day. At the conclusion of Chell's
testing, instead of the cake she had been
promised, she is met with an incinerator
from which she narrowly escapes. Here,
GLaDOS reveals her true murderous nature.
Chell makes her way through the decaying
maintenance areas of the facility in an
attempt to escape. After many ambushes by
GLaDOS and her sentry turrets, Chell finds
herself in GLaDOS' main control centre.
After destroying GLaDOS' morality core,
the robot, now free of her restraints
begins to once again flood the building
with neurotoxins,
however, Chell manages to incinerate the
AI's personality cores before being
consumed by the toxins. GLaDOS is
seemingly destroyed while Chell is
thrown outside to the parking lot in the
subsequent explosion.
Doug follow Chell up to the surface where
he sees her being dragged back into the
facility by the Party Escort bot.
Against his companion used objections,
Doug goes back into the facility to save
Chell as he feels responsible for her
predicament. Back in the facility, he
discovers that Chell has been placed in
the cryo-chamber in the relaxation
centre. He discovers that GLaDOS'
explosion blew the main power grid and
so all of the cryo-chambers are offline.
He attempts to reach the cryo-control
to rescue Chell, but without the advice
of his companion cube, which is no longer
talking to him
due to the anti-psychotic pills he
previously took, he is incapable of selecting
in the right way and is shot in the leg
by a turret and falls unconscious. Upon
regaining consciousness,
he is back into his psychosis,
discovering that he can no longer rescue
Chell. However, the companion cube tells
him that he can save her by patching her
cryo-chamber into the Reserve Grid,
placing her in stasis for an specified
amount of time, but saving her from death.
After doing so, he goes to sleep in the
Relaxation Vault. GLaDOS' partial
destruction is followed by a period of
inactivity within the Aperture
Laboratories, during which time,
maintenance systems and personality
cores maintain their functions. The
facility remains in disarray having
become overgrown and dilapidated. An
unknown amount of time later, Chell is
reawakened by a personality core called
Wheatley. He insists that he can secure an
escape route out of Aperture Laboratories,
which instead, results an inadvertent
reactivation of GLaDOS, and the testing
begins again.
Wheatley rescues Chell from the testing
course and helps her to GLaDOS' control
room, sabotaging GLaDOS' defences
along the way. After an extremely brief
confrontation, Wheatley, with Chell's help, is placed in control of the Aperture
Science facilities. He immediately
becomes mad with power
and proceeds to integrate GLaDOS' core
with a potato battery.
Chell makes her way back to Wheatley's
lair and after a relatively brief battle,
puts GLaDOS back in charge. As a token of
appreciation, GLaDOS allows Chell to
leave Aperture Science and sends her
back to the surface. Here she stands before
an endless field of grain. Free,
unaware of what has happened to the Earth
during her absence.
Hi guys! Thanks for watching. This was
Portal: A History of Aperture. If you
liked this, then hit that LIKE button,
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then hit that SUBSCRIBE button. I'm gonna
aim to get at least one of these out a month,
if not, maybe two. They do take a lot of
work. Anyway, enjoy your day! Bye.
