SHELDON (to the family at dinner): Twenty-five thousand dollars. That’s 833.33 copies of the complete Encyclopædia Britannica . Or, one slightly used Cray supercomputer from the 1980s.

GEORGE: Or a new truck for me.

Sheldon spends 48 hours coding. He uses George Sr.’s football game tapes as a test sequence. He refuses sleep, subsisting on bologna sandwiches and Dr. Pepper. At 3 AM, he screams.