Legend goes that Apple Inc., the world’s biggest consumer technology company, was founded in a California garage by two guys: Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak. While Jobs was a marketing whiz who could sell anything, Wozniak was the electronics genius who liked a solid workbench.But on April 1, 1976, the day Apple was established as Apple Computer, there was a third person who signed on the paperwork: Ronald Wayne. And unlike the other two, Wayne was already a veteran of the then nascent Silicon Valley.So, what was Wayne’s contribution to Apple and why did he fade away from public memory? As Apple turns 50 years old, we look at how Wayne became the company’s “forgotten founder”.Born in Cleveland, Ohio, in 1934, Wayne was raised in New York City. He studied technical drafting — creation of visual plans to communicate how objects function or are constructed, thus acting as a universal language for engineering and manufacturing — at New York’s School of Industrial Art, after which he headed west to California in the mid-1950s.At first, he tried selling slot machines — a business that went bust. “I discovered very quickly that I had no business being in business,” he told Cult of Mac, a website that covers all things Apple. “I was far better working in engineering.”Before he joined Apple, he worked for a number of companies. Throughout his career, he most notably worked at the federally-funded Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and the gaming company Atari.Also Read | Ashoka helped spread Buddhism far and wide. How his grandson did the same for JainismIn the 1970s, he was at Atari, working as a product development engineer and chief draftsman. Here, he met and befriended both Jobs and Wozniak, both of whom were in their 20s at that point of time.‘Adult in the room’Story continues below this adAccording to Wayne, who was then 41 years old, Jobs regarded him as a source of information “he didn’t previously have access to”. “I decided to join them because I had 20 years of experience in the business, and in all facets of the business… I wanted to mentor them,” he said. Steve Jobs, Apple’s chief executive, speaks at the Apple Worldwide Developers Conference in San Francisco, on June 6, 2011. (The New York Times)One day, Jobs told Wayne that he and Wozniak wanted to start a company that manufactured personal computers. “I thought it was a slick idea, the right product at the right time. I had no question it would be successful,” Wayne recalled.At the time, Wozniak had built a circuit board that went on to form the basis of the Apple 1, the company’s first-ever computer. Jobs wanted to monetise Wozniak’s computing genius, but the latter was rather protective of his designs and resisted the idea of a company owning them.So, Jobs thought Wayne could help “talk some sense into Wozniak” and help him understand the concept of proprietorship. Wayne, who was living in Mountain View at the time, asked Jobs to bring Wozniak over to his apartment for a chat. Once Wozniak relented, Jobs said: “That’s it. We’re going to form a company. Woz will have 45%, I’ll have 45%, and you’ll have 10% as a tiebreaker.”Story continues below this adAccording to Wayne, he was supposed to be the “adult in the room” in case of any dispute between Jobs and Wozniak. “But what they really needed from me was skills they did not yet have,” he said. Wayne promptly typed up the partnership agreement on an IBM typewriter — much to Wozniak’s amusement — and Apple Computer was born.Exit musicBut less than two weeks of the company being founded, Wayne was already plotting his exit.The reason: Jobs had secured Apple’s first “big deal”: the company was to sell 50 machines to The Byte Shop, a small computer chain. But that required cash, and Apple needed to borrow $15,000.Wayne recalled in a 2016 interview with BBC that he had heard of The Byte Shop having a not-so-good reputation in terms of paying its bills. His previous experience of having gone bankrupt while running a business also played on his mind.Story continues below this adAlso Read | End of an era: Why Mumbai’s iconic AH Wheeler bookstalls are being shut down“Jobs and Wozniak didn’t have two nickels to rub together. I had a house, a bank account, and a car… I was reachable!”In the BBC interview, he recalled telling the duo that while he wanted to help them out, he could no longer be part of the company.Another reason that prompted him to leave was his own ambition. In another interview, he said: “I also knew that I was standing in the shadow of giants, and as a result, I knew I was never going to have a product of my own to develop.”But he did leave one lasting contribution. He drew the company’s first logo: that of Newton sitting under a tree, an apple waiting over his head. In his interview with Adam Mendler, Wayne admitted that “it was not a 20th-century logo”. “Woz was whimsical, and I caught some of that, so I created a whimsical logo,” he said.Story continues below this adOver time, it was reported that Wayne received a total of $2300 — in two instalments of $800 and $1500 — in the following year in return for relinquishing his stake in Apple. Wayne had also not refuted that version of events until his recent interview with Mendler.“I never sold my interest in Apple, and I certainly didn’t sell it for $800,” he said. “Several weeks after I left, I got a letter in the mail from Steve Jobs. No letter, no note, no explanation, and a check for $800. I thought it was a gratuity. I never sold my interest in Apple to anyone at any amount.”After AppleWhether or not Wayne sold his Apple shares, his original stake of 10% would amount to somewhere between $350-400 billion as of today. After Apple, he went on to work at Lawrence Livermore and a host of other companies, before retiring as chief engineer at Thor Electronics. Now 91, he lives in a rather modest residence on the Nevada-California border.Although he had claimed repeatedly that he harboured no ill-will towards Apple or the two Steves, he did have one regret: selling his original copy of the partnership agreement to an autograph collector for a mere $500. During an auction in 2011, the document sold for $1.6 million.Story continues below this adAnd even though Apple has gone on to create many iconic products since he left, he does not own a single one of them. In his BBC interview, he recalled that someone once gifted him an iPad many years ago. But like many other things, he gave it away.