Four decades ago, the Super Bowl became the Super Bowl. It wasn’t because of anything that happened in the game itself: On Jan. 22, 1984, the Los Angeles Raiders defeated Washington 38-9 in Super Bowl XVIII, a contest that was mostly over before halftime. Conceived by the Chiat/Day ad agency and directed by Ridley Scott, then fresh off making the seminal science-fiction noir “Blade Runner,” the Apple commercial “1984,” which was intended to introduce the new Macintosh computer, would become one of the most acclaimed commercials ever made. It also helped to kick off — pun partially intended — the Super Bowl tradition of the big game serving as an annual showcase for gilt-edged ads from Fortune 500 companies. It all began with the Apple co-founder Steve Jobs’s desire to take the battle with the company’s rivals to a splashy television broadcast he knew nothing about.

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Persons: George Orwell, Ridley Scott, Steve Jobs’s, — Scott, John Sculley, Steve Hayden, Fred Goldberg, Anya Rajah, JOHN SCULLEY, we’re, “ Organizations: Super Bowl, Los Angeles Raiders, Washington, XVIII, CBS, Apple, Fortune, Chiat, Businessweek, IBM Locations: Steve