Annual Report
The accounts of Aperture Science Innovators for the year ended 31 December 1958, prepared by a department that is confident nobody reads past the first table and has arranged the tables accordingly. The President’s statement follows the figures, because he insisted on reading them first.
This company is wholly owned by one man, has no board, no outside shareholders, and no obligation whatever to publish any of what follows. It publishes it anyway, every spring, because the President enjoys the tables and because he holds that a firm which will not show its figures is a firm that has something in them.
Receipts By Segment
Gross receipts, fiscal 1958, by product segment
| Segment | Receipts | Share | Change | Accounting note |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Shower curtains, military | $24,600,000 | 59.7% | +6% | The 1956 contract. Every branch but one. |
| Shower curtains, civil | $6,100,000 | 14.8% | +11% | Institutional Grey remains the volume line |
| Industrial gels | $4,400,000 | 10.7% | +140% | Repulsion outsells propulsion nine to one |
| Aperture apparatus, sold or leased | $2,900,000 | 7.0% | +80% | Eleven units. Not doors. |
| Substrate preparation | $1,300,000 | 3.2% | New | Price per pound withheld |
| Storage cubes, plates, grills | $1,100,000 | 2.7% | +22% | The cube stores nothing and sells anyway |
| Other | $800,000 | 1.9% | — | Larger than three named segments. |
Total gross receipts $41,200,000. The curtain, in both segments, accounts for seventy-four cents of every dollar this company took in, and the Materials Department has been informed.
Expenditure
Expenditure, fiscal 1958, by head
| Head | Amount | Share | Accounting note |
|---|---|---|---|
| Wages and salaries | $9,800,000 | 25.2% | 1,247 persons, paid Fridays, from a tin |
| Curtain manufacture | $8,100,000 | 20.8% | Vinyl, grommets, the weighted hem |
| Research divisions | $6,200,000 | 15.9% | Six divisions. One never publishes. |
| Facilities and the shafts | $5,400,000 | 13.9% | Shaft 09 came in four months early and eleven per cent over |
| Lunar substrate procurement | $11,400,000 | 29.3% | See the auditors' note |
| Third-floor ceilings | $84,600 | 0.2% | Nine. Facilities keeps a separate ledger. |
| Berthing, Aperture Marine | $9,600 | 0.02% | Quarterly. Paid to a dock. |
| Compensation, volunteers | $71,040 | 0.2% | 1,184 afternoons at $60 |
| Legal | $41,000 | 0.1% | Three people. Basement, rear. |
Total expenditure $38,900,000, of which one line item exceeds every research division combined, and Accounting would like it noted that Accounting did not sign for it.
Auditors' Note
The auditors have asked, on three occasions, for an explanation of the expenditure recorded under Lunar Substrate Procurement, being the largest single line item in the company’s history, paid to forty-one vendors in nine countries through four agents over fourteen months, and described in the President’s own annotation as “a bargain”.
The President has replied on three occasions. The reply is reproduced below. The audit, scheduled for February, was rescheduled to March, and has been rescheduled to a date the auditors have declined to name.
“It is my money. I bought a moon with it. Next question.”
The President’s Statement
Forty-one million dollars in, thirty-nine million out, and the difference spent by March on a shaft that opened four months early. That is the year. If you want it in one sentence, that is the sentence, and everything else on this sheet is Accounting.
The curtain still pays for the science. It has paid for the science every year since 1953 and I do not apologise for that and I never will. A company that is ashamed of the product that keeps the lights on is a company that deserves the dark. We sell the finest shower curtain in the Republic to every branch of the armed forces but one, and with the money we are punching holes in the fabric of space, and I would like to see the outfit in New Mexico put that in an annual report.
Research spending is up. It will be up next year. Wages are up and they will be up next year too, because I hired a hundred and forty-one people in 1958 and I intend to hire more, and every one of them will be paid on a Friday from a tin, and Accounting can put that in the notes.
The substrate line is the substrate line. I have answered the auditors three times and I will answer them a fourth time in the same words. There is no line on this sheet I would take back.
Cave JohnsonPresident & FounderFiscal 1958. Read, approved, not audited.
The auditors asked me, privately, whether he really said “next question” three times. He said it four. The fourth time there was no question. — C.
Form ASI-601. All figures unaudited. The company is wholly owned by its founder; the prospectus, ASI-602, explains at some length why that is not going to change. Aperture Marine’s berthing is paid quarterly to a dock whose location the Marine Division is presently unable to confirm.