Brian Heater for Engadget:

Thirty-five years ago, Ronald G. Wayne helped co-found the Apple Computer Company with two men 20 years his junior, Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak — names that have since become synonymous with the personal computer revolution of the early 80s. For Wayne, however, it was a gig that lasted all of a dozen days, abruptly ending when he marched down to the Santa Clara County Registry Office to have himself stricken from the contract he’d authored. His is a name that pops up every few years or so, shrouded in mystery, the “forgotten” or “unknown” founder of one of the world’s most successful companies – and perhaps more infamously, the man who once owned 10 percent of its stock, only to walk away from it all a mere $2,300 richer.

Ron Wayne now lives a very modest life in a small town in Nevada. Given the glamour and wealth that Apple’s other two cofounders, Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak, have experienced, you’d think that Wayne would be bitter about his decision, but he isn’t. He recognizes that both Woz and Jobs were headed in a very different trajectory than he was.