Happy Birthday, Jack!

Am I the first on to find this Easter Egg? This morning (Christmas Eve) after my player booted, the message "Happy Birthday, Jack!" was displayed for a few seconds while the first song began to play. It seems to do it each time I power up today.

Has anyone seen this before? I did a search here and in the FAQ but couldn't find mention of it. Does anyone know who Jack is?

I thought he was the first prototype empeg but the geek guide shows his manufacture date as October.

Birth of an empeg
Meet Jack

In June 1998, following considerable interest in the MP3 Mobile, Hugo decided to produce a commercial version and started a new company - empeg - to develop and market it.

Hugo worked with a talented hardware designer, Patrick Arnold, to design an in-dash MP3 player from scratch.

The first prototype, named Jack, was completed by Christmas 1998 and worked perfectly first time. You can see from the picture that most of the Mk.1 car player features were present in Jack, although two further prototypes were made before the Mk.1 design was finalised. Unfortunately the car player software is no longer compatible with Jack, so he has now taken pride of place in the empeg display cabinet.

Up to the release of the Mark 1 empeg player, in August 1999, practically all of the development was carried out by four engineers - Hugo, Patrick, Mike and Toby - from the comfort of Hugo's spare bedroom and dining room. Since then several more developers and administrative staff have joined the company, which now occupies an office and dispatch suite in Cambridge, UK.

RioCar.org Linky

I got that message a few months ago. I think it indicates that our empeg internal clock is, proverbialy, "blinking 8's". It's probably just not set.

To complete the story, Jack is now mounted on a glass plaque which was presented to empeg co-founder Steve Sanders on the occassion of his moving on to greater things.



Rob

This happened to my "Main" Empeg yesterday. Has yet to occur on any of my other players though.

I've just seen the message today for the first time, although I one the empeg player for several years now... ;-)

Ive had my mk2a for over a year now and today is the first time I've seen this message as well! Happy Birthday, Jack!

Love the username and icon.