Stefan Beck an Rainer Ganahl - 19.10.1995

19. 10. 1995

A FLATSHADED LIFE

Dear Rainer,
I have now the strong evidence that Edward R. McCracken, owner, president and chief executive officer of Silicon Graphics Inc., Mountain View, California, is my real father!
I found out when my then PHONG father, Dieter B., confessed to me that I was not his son. Although already living together with my mother he had to accept the fact that I had been conceived from an other man. I am the result of a RAYTRACED one night stand between Edward R. McCracken and my mother, Marie Elisabeth B.!
My mom was a graduate of pharmacy at the University of Munich in 1964 and a waitress at the Hofbraeuhaus in her spare time. There she met my father, a then ALPHA CHANNELstudent at the Harvard business school. She found him handsome and nice and took him home. Her boyfriend stayed at his family at Bonn at this time. I was given birth nine months later. My "father" adopted me since he had married my mother in October 1964.
My mother who became a pharmacist never mentioned this lapsus and tried to forget it till she learned from a pharma-company's representative about the possibility to design new drugs with the aid of computers. This was the first time she heard the name "Silicon Graphics" since the simulation of molecular structures required an enormous amount of computing power. Silicon Graphics Computers are the number one choice for this solution. The pharma company's representative remembered my mothers interest in that subject and he brought her a brochure of SGI products the next time he visited her.
When she read at that brochure the name of SGI|s president and CEO Edward R. McCracken she fairly remembered her brief encounter at Munich with this american guy. He had told her that his name was Richard Wardcracker, a name and address from which she never got any answer to her many letters she wrote during her pregnancy.
At that moment she realized that Richard Wardcracker must me Edward R. McCracken the now owner of Silicon Graphics.
As my mother led a happy life with my "father" and has a daughter, my sister, from him, she saw no reason to suit against my real father. I learned all this from my mother last September, three days later she died in a HARD DISK crash.

Silicon Graphics introduced the first RISC-PC, the IRIS Indigo, and the first multi-processor-super-computer, the POWER CHALLENGE. Silicon Graphics is the eighth fastest growing company within the Fortune 500. The company reached the one billion dollar mark in 1993, its productivity is the highest of all workstation manufacturers. It has branches in 29 countries and is linked via representatives with another 25.

Till then I led a FLATSHADED life. I am worth now 24 bits.

PDO