Computer History Museum

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Computer History Museum
File:Computerhistorymuseum-logo.svg
Established 1996
Location Mountain View, California
Website www.computerhistory.org
File:Computer History Museum, Mountain View, CA.JPG
Computer History Museum, Mountain View, CA
File:Front Entrance to the Computer History Museum.jpg
Front Entrance to the Computer History Museum
File:Computer History Museum Lobby.JPG
Computer History Museum Lobby
File:The Charles Babbage Difference Engine No. 2.jpg
The Charles Babbage Difference Engine No. 2

The Computer History Museum (CHM) is a museum established in 1996 in Mountain View, California, USA. The Museum is dedicated to preserving and presenting the stories and artifacts of the information age, and exploring the computing revolution and its impact on society.

History

The museum's origins date to 1968 when Gordon Bell began a quest for a historical collection and, at that same time, others were looking to preserve the Whirlwind computer. The resulting Museum Project had its first exhibit in 1975, located in a converted coat closet in a DEC lobby. In 1978, the museum, now The Digital Computer Museum (TDCM), moved to a larger DEC lobby in Marlborough, Massachusetts. Maurice Wilkes presented the first lecture at TDCM in 1979 – the presentation of such lectures has continued to the present time.

TDCM incorporated as The Computer Museum (TCM) in 1982. In 1984, TCM moved to Boston, locating on Museum Wharf.

In 1996/1997, The TCM History Center (TCMHC) in Silicon Valley was established; a site at Moffett Field was provided by NASA (an old building that was previously the Naval Base furniture store) and a large number of artifacts were shipped there from TCM.

In 1999, TCMHC incorporated and TCM ceased operation, shipping its remaining artifacts to TCMHC in 2000. The name TCM had been retained by the Boston Museum of Science so, in 2000, the name TCMHC was changed to Computer History Museum (CHM).

In 2003, CHM opened its new building (previously occupied by Silicon Graphics), at 1401 N. Shoreline Blvd in Mountain View, California, to the public.[1][2]

Collections and exhibition space

The Computer History Museum claims to house the largest and most significant collection of computing artifacts in the world (the Heinz Nixdorf Museum, Paderborn, Germany, has more items on display but a far smaller total collection[3]). This includes many rare or one-of-a-kind objects such as a Cray-1 supercomputer as well as a Cray-2, Cray-3, the Utah teapot, the 1969 Neiman Marcus Kitchen Computer, an Apple I, and an example of the first generation of Google's racks of custom-designed web servers.[4] The collection comprises nearly 90,000 objects, photographs and films, as well as 4,000 feet (1,200 m) of cataloged documentation and several hundred gigabytes of software.

The museum's 25,000-square-foot (2,300 m2) exhibit "Revolution: The First 2000 Years of Computing," opened to the public on January 13, 2011. It covers the history of computing in 20 galleries, from the abacus to the Internet. The entire exhibition is also available online.[5][6][7]

The museum has several additional exhibits, including a Difference Engine designed by Charles Babbage in the 1840s and constructed by the Science Museum, a restoration of a historic PDP-1 minicomputer, and a new exhibit on Google Street View and the history of "surrogate travel".

Former media executive John Hollar was appointed CEO of The Computer History Museum in July 2008.

In 2010 the museum began with the collection of source code of important software, beginning with Apple's MacPaint 1.3, written in a combination of Assembly and Pascal and available as download for the public.[8][9] In 2012 the APL programming language followed.[10] In February 2013 Adobe Systems, Inc. donated the Photoshop 1.0.1 source code to the collection.[11][12] On March 25, 2014 followed Microsoft with the source code donation of SCP MS-DOS 1.25 and a mixture of Altos MS-DOS 2.11 and TeleVideo PC DOS 2.11 as well as Word for Windows 1.1a under their own license.[13][14] On October 21, 2014, Xerox Alto's source code and other resources followed.[15]

Gallery

  • Punched Card Gallery in Revolution exhibition at the Computer History Museum.jpg

    Punched card Gallery in Revolution exhibition

  • Software Arch in the Revolution exhibition at the Computer History Museum.jpg

    Software Arch in the Revolution exhibition

  • Theater in the Software Gallery in the Revolution exhibition at the Computer History Museum..JPG

    Theater in the Software Gallery in the Revolution exhibition

  • Sage Computer in Revolution exhibition at the Computer History Museum.JPG

    Sage Computer in Revolution exhibition

  • Personal Computers Gallery in the Revolution exhibition at the Computer History Museum.JPG

    Personal Computers Gallery in the Revolution exhibition

  • Google Maps with Street View Exhibit at the Computer History Museum.JPG

    Google Maps with Street View Exhibit

Fellows

The CHM Fellows are exceptional men and women whose ideas have changed the world and affected nearly every human alive today. The first fellow began Grace Hopper in 1987 and it has grown to 70 members as of 2015.[16]

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See also

References

  1. ↑ Bell, Gordon (2011).
  2. ↑ Backgrounder Press release on the Computer History Museum
  3. ↑ Heinz Nixdorf Museum
  4. ↑ How Google Works David F. Carr, Baseline.com, July 6, 2006
  5. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  6. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  7. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  8. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  9. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  10. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  11. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  12. ↑ Adobe Photoshop Source Code
  13. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  14. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found. (NB. While the author and publishers claim the package would include MS-DOS 1.1 and 2.0, it actually contains SCP MS-DOS 1.25 and a mixture of files from Altos MS-DOS 2.11 and TeleVideo PC DOS 2.11.)
  15. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  16. ↑ Computer History Museum Hall of Fellows

Further reading

External links

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