Engadget interviews Apple co-founder Ron Wayne

Ron Wayne is the man who missed out on the fortunes of Apple. He was one of the three co-founders of Apple, along with Steve Wozniak and Steve Jobs. Shortly after he signed the contract (which sold last week for almost $1.6 million) that founded the company, he sold his share for a mere pittance -- $2,300. Engadget's Brian Heater spent a couple of days talking with Wayne about his brush with history, and tells the story in prose, photos, and video.

Heater notes in the intro to his post that the 77 year-old Wayne seems genuinely puzzled about why people find him to be fascinating. From his small pre-fab home in Pahrump, Nevada, Wayne now makes his living buying, selling and trading coins and stamps. He's also written a couple of books: Insolence of Office, which is a treatise on morale and economic collapse, and Adventures of an Apple Founder.

Wayne was the designer of the original Apple logo, an ornate Victorian-looking drawing of Isaac Newton underneath the proverbial apple tree. That logo was quickly replaced by the now-classic Apple "byte" logo, erasing one of the few traces of Wayne's time as an owner of the company. Wayne still has a stack of drawings of Apple I case concepts he designed, as well as a photocopy of the contract that sold last week for millions. He sold the original contract to a collector in the early 1990s for about $500.

Heater's interview is a rare look at the man who was so close to becoming a billionaire, but says he has "no regrets." Be sure to visit our sister site Engadget for the full interview, and enjoy the video clip below.