New Apple HQ, 1957

On Tuesday, Steve Jobs unveiled Apple’s latest seamless, white, glowing product before the Cupertino City Council: the company’s proposed new headquarters, a four-story, glass-walled circular building intended to house 12,000 employees. “It’s a little like a spaceship landed,” Jobs said. And the blurry, sunstruck renderings (architect pointedly unspecified) did indeed remind me of early Spielberg.

But after marveling at the idea of an endless corridor of offices, and speculating on Twitter about which firm could handle all that curved glass, I realized Apple’s ring reminded me of something else. And it wasn’t the future. It was 1957.