Fate loves irony: Elon Musk once worked for a video game company called Rocket Science before founding SpaceX and Tesla

Fate loves irony is a phrase that describes events in our lives when the opposite of what we expect happens. A famous example is a fire station that burns down. In the early 1990s, way before he became a millionaire and founder of the largest electric car company and the only private company that sent astronauts to space, Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk once worked at a videogame company in Palo Alto, California where he wrote a multitasker for PC in C++.

The program could basically read video from a CD while running a game at the same time. The name of that videogame company was Rocket Science. “In early 90s, I wrote a multitasker for PCs that spoofed the CPU and CD-ROM to act in parallel,” wrote Elon Musk.

Thanks to Pranay Pathole of Evolved Hydrogen who shared this gem with his followers on Twitter. This morning, Pranay tweeted:

“In the early 90s, @elonmusk worked at a videogame company in Palo Alto, where he wrote a multitasker for PC in C++ which could basically read video from a CD while running a game at the same time. The name of that videogame company was Rocket Science. Fate loves irony.”

In response, Musk wrote:

“True. Ancient times … Had to flip CPU registers explicitly, as computer was so slow.”

True. Ancient times … Had to flip CPU registers explicitly, as computer was so slow.

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) April 14, 2021

Before Tesla and SpaceX, Musk co-founded a web software company Zip2 in 1995, which would go on to make him a millionaire. He also founded X.com in 1999, which later became PayPal. Here’s a story of how Elon Musk defied all odds and proved everyone wrong to build the world’s most valuable car company.