Elon Musk's 1994 double life: ultracapacitor research by day, game drivers by night
elonmusk · x · 2026-10-28
A look back at Elon Musk's early career: in the summer of 1994, the 23-year-old spent his days at Pinnacle Research Institute in Los Gatos imagining ultracapacitors powering electric cars, then drove to Palo Alto each evening for a second job at Rocket Science Games.
The startup was full of future legends—Tony Fadell (later iPod), Apple QuickTime people, and ILM engineers. Hired to write mundane joystick and mouse drivers, Musk quietly took on a harder problem: getting era machines to run a game and stream CD video simultaneously. Co-founder Peter Barrett recalled him as "completely unflappable."
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