After Dark “Can of Worms” Screensaver

"Can of Worms," was first introduced in After Dark's first series of computer screensaver software. It was developed by Jack Eastman at Berkley Systems and first appeared for Apple Macintosh monitors in 1989. It featured simple, line-art worms that seemed to explode from the screen and quickly consume it in criss-cross or squiggly patterns when left idle.

The screensaver is a computer program that blanks the display screen or fills it with moving images or patterns when the screen has been idle for a designated time. The original purpose was to prevent phosphor burn-in on CRT or plasma computer monitors, which would cause a “ghost image” to be burned onto the screen. Today, modern computer monitors are not susceptible to this issue, but perhaps in response to the workplace environment in which they originated, many screensavers continue this legacy of whimsical motion graphics by populating idle monitors with animals or fish, nature photography, games and visual expressions of fractals, patterns or abstract forms.