Please note: this blog has been migrated to a new location at https://jakesgordon.com. All new writing will be published over there, existing content has been left here for reference, but will no longer be updated (as of Nov 2023)

Visiting the Computer History Museum

Wed, Dec 28, 2011

This blog has been quiet for a while…

So I haven’t had much time to write for a while.

However, I did get a very nice break over christmas where I went down to California and managed to finally visit the Computer History Museum - Yes, I am a geek, this is a technical blog, deal with it!

I really, really enjoyed the visit. I had almost the full day, but I wish I had a few more hours - I’ll have to plan a second trip. The museum is very well organized, although I wasn’t always 100% sure I was going in a chronological direction.

Most of the museum is dedicated to the main exhibition Revolution - The First 2000 Years of Computing, taking us through from the Abacus to the World Wide Web:

I grew up with personal computers in the 80’s, 90’s and beyond, and I’ve read a lot about what I (used to) think of as computing history… Xerox parc, Doug Engelbart and Ivan Sutherland, Homebrew Computer Club and early Apple and Microsoft days… and I went in expecting mostly personal computer stuff, but I now realise that there is much, much more to computing history than just the personal computer.

I mean, of course, I knew of the Babbage Engine, the Eniac, Enigma, Collosus and Cray and such, (not to mention the Abacus and the Slide Rule), but I hadn’t really put them into context until wandering (in chronological order!) through the museum, and it was really fascinating.

I also really enjoyed seeing some of the computers I grew up with, the Commodore64, ZX Spectrum, Amiga, SpeakNSpell, Little Professor… and of course the games, Pong, Atari, PacMan, Infocom…

I have only a few, very very minor negatives:

Even so, I highly recommend any self respecting computer geek taking a day out to go visit in person, or even just online:

Here are some photo’s of the bits that stood out for me (in no particular order):

UPDATE: _The links below may be out of date because the computer history museum display is subject to change

The Altair 8800 - a heavy influence on the homebrew computer club
The Xerox parc Alto - amazingly ahead of its time
The Amiga - best 16 bit machine ever!
The original wooden Apple 1
Atari 2600 - a gaming classic
Babbage Difference Engine #2 - not built in his lifetime - not until 1995!
The Xerox parc hippie bean bag
Welcome to the Computer History Museum
The Commodore64 - my first computer - learned Basic and 6510 assembler on this
A Cray super computer
Eniac - WW2 Workhorse
Eniac Diorama - takes up the whole room
Eniac on a Chip - Moores law in action
The germans WW2 enigma code maker
Ahhhh games, my favorite reason for computing
I spent many childhood years playing Infocom text adventures
Awesome flow chart of the the history of programming languages - wish there was a poster version!
Holy Crap! an online Craigslist in the 70s - go readup on it!
Doug Engelbarts original wooden mouse prototype
Ha Ha Ha - Officer Mac
What pixar built before movies
The original Pong prototype machine
Welcome to the Computer History Museum
Ha Ha Ha - Dot Com Boom at its finest
Childhood memories - Speak n Spell and a ZX Spectrum
The ZX Spectrum - nowhere near as good as the Commodore64
You arent graphics programming until you have a spinning teapot
The mechanical Turk
Classic Windows vs Mac