The Computer History Museum - An Amazing Trip Through Time   - 4,660 Views, 4 Comments

Summary: Computer history is fascinating even if you aren't a geek; just think about how far we've come in so little time. The Computer History Museum does a great job of bringing it all home.

Previous Article « U.S. Struggles to Retain Control of the Internet
Read Next Article » This is Halloween Made Easy - Virtual Pumpkin Carving

  Follow Anne on Twitter     Friend Anne on Facebook

The Computer History Museum in Mountain View, California, is a truly amazing place. Even if you are not a geek like me, or indeed not a geek at all, it’s a wonderful walk through the evolution of computing, and provides unique and unexpected views into history.

Indeed, the Computer History Museum holds something for everyone - an hour and a half long tour held the attention of guests from 7 to 70. Now that’s saying something!

Starting with what is considered by most to be the dawn of modern computing, the abacus, the exhibits are truly something to behold. Moving along in time from the abacus, one passes an array of antique slide and cylinder rules, a difference engine, log books as thick as your arm, and a model of and genuine cards from a Jaquard loom (considered by some to be the first punch cards, and hence the first computer program). And that’s just in the pre-keyed machine area!

Then you move on to analog computers, computers made up of banks and banks of tubes, and computers bigger than most bedrooms in Silicon Valley. They have an Eniac and a Johnniac, And Crays 1, 2, and 3. They have an IBM 360, and the IBMs which came before that. A PDP10. And even the Neiman Marcus Kitchen Computer, which was offered at $10,600, came with a 1 1/2 day class, and never sold at all - not a one.

They had siamese monitors:

the first analog computer:

and a honking big tube:

AND

They had this amazing bit of history - do you know what it is?:

The Computer History Museum - An Amazing Trip Through Time

 Follow Anne on Twitter

 Twitter Explained in Plain English

 Friend Anne on Facebook

Previous Article « U.S. Struggles to Retain Control of the Internet
Read Next Article » This is Halloween Made Easy - Virtual Pumpkin Carving

Read more:

»  Geek Atlas Tells Geeks Where to Go

»  How to Delete Internet History and Search History from Internet Explorer, Safari, IE7, Firefox and Google Toolbar

»  Golden Palace Casino Victim of eBay “Sniper”, Claims Expert

»  Google’s New Web History - What “View and manage your web history” Means for Your Privacy on Google

For additional similar stories check out our archives on Reviews

NOTE: We never, ever, ever will recommend any product or service on this site that we have not regularly used ourselves and do not wholeheartedly believe in. That said, in some cases after being very pleased with a product or service, we may enter into a relationship with the provider of that product or service such that if someone purchases that product or service based on our recommendation, we may get a small payment. Such payments go towards the upkeep of the Internet Patrol.

 

4 Comments »

  1. It looks a bit like an enigma engine; certainly the cog behind/next to the box tends to re-inforce that thought.

    Comment by Craig Hughes — 10/20/2005 @ 5:54 am

  2. It does indeed look like an Enigma engine, that’s what I was thinking.

    Comment by Paul M. — 10/21/2005 @ 8:45 am

  3. Hi,
    this is definitely an enigma if you ask me!
    Best regards
    Tam Hanna

    Comment by Tam Hanna — 10/23/2005 @ 12:54 am

  4. i keep one old computer “santaka”. maybe museum wants to buy it?

    Comment by timeisprecious — 8/24/2008 @ 11:13 am

RSS feed for comments on this post.

Leave a comment

Warning! All comments which contain URLs and are clearly just spam to generate a link back to the URL will be deleted on sight. Don't bother wasting your time!

If you are going to include a URL in your comment,
please keep it under 25 characters in length,
or use TinyURL to shorten it before including it in your comment.

Line and paragraph breaks are automatic, your email address is never displayed.
HTML allowed: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <strike> <strong>

(required)

(required)


If you have not posted a comment here before, we apologize for having to ask you to enter the letters and numbers you see in the image above to validate your comment, but we are being attacked by thousands of comment form spams every day! You only need to do this once; once you have successfuly posted a comment here you will not be asked to do this again. Thank you for your understanding!

 
 This article first appeared on 10/19/2005
The Internet Patrol
Patrolling the Internet for You!