I'm a fan of CHM. That said there collections have (understandably) a rather Silicon-Valley-legacy-centric view of, erm, computer history. You'll find little mention, for example, of these tantalizing early mentions of alternative computer architectures (with pictures!) in NSA's predecessor OP-20-G, as posed alongside the then-nascent von Neumann architecture (also covered).
for example. Most of these systems were things that humans interacted with in some way, and that interaction is hard to get from static images. Watching a video of Larry Tesler demonstrating the Alto is great - and even better if you can turn around and try an emulated Alto in your browser (of course operational hardware would be even better.)
This is really awesome. The CHM is one of my favorite places in the world. I had applied for a web developer position there not too long ago, great to see them expand things online like this
This place is great, but my work had a function here and I walked around with one of our juniors and never have I felt so old. The pure astonishment and confusion when looking at a “floppy disk” aged me instantly.
This is very welcome. Just a couple months ago I was down some interesting retro-computing rabbit hole and there was a story referenced in a couple articles and a book. The cited source was an original document that's in CHM's collection but it wasn't accessible on CHM's site nor was it available anywhere else online. Frustrating but understandable. They must get mountains of documents contributed from personal files of first-hand participants who created this history.
Sorting, scanning, indexing and tagging all those loose files must be a Herculean yet monotonously thankless chore. So thanks to all the volunteers and donors for enabling this invaluable resource to exist.
This is great, though every geek should visit this place in person. It gets better every year. Especially on the days where they demo the giant IBM 1401.
My buddy took me on a Silicon Valley tour when I lived there , we hit up the HP Garage, Apple Garage, Intel Museum & the Computer History Museum in one day.
Went for the first time a couple weeks ago while on a road trip — incredible! However I counted about two dozen items on display that I own, which tells me I should slow down on the collecting / ramp up the downsizing.
I just read (see below) that LCM had (among other things) a working PLATO terminal. (Was it connected to a live PLATO system? looks like it, possibly.)
I'm hoping they digitize some of the older archives they have in storage.
For example, they apparently have 23 U-Matic tapes of the HOPL (History of Programming Languages) conference in 1978 [1].
The proceedings [2] describe one of the tapes that don't make it into the transcribed proceedings:
> The after-dinner speeches at the conference banquet were devoted to humorous reminiscences and anecdotes about the languages and events during their development. The banquet anecdotes are not included in this volume because, although they are humorous to hear, the voice inflections make a big difference, and they are not necessarily amusing to read.
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[ 2.9 ms ] story [ 52.2 ms ] thread[1] https://www.youtube.com/@ComputerHistory
Visiting it a few weeks ago was amazing too!
Vintage marketing of the future: https://www.computerhistory.org/collections/curator-picks/vi...
Lectures: https://www.computerhistory.org/collections/catalog/search-c...
Oral Histories: https://www.computerhistory.org/collections/catalog/search-c...
Favorite Tech Museums
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46504220
https://www.governmentattic.org/8docs/NSA-WasntAllMagic_2002...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Computer_Museum,_Boston#Co...
https://smalltalkzoo.computerhistory.org
for example. Most of these systems were things that humans interacted with in some way, and that interaction is hard to get from static images. Watching a video of Larry Tesler demonstrating the Alto is great - and even better if you can turn around and try an emulated Alto in your browser (of course operational hardware would be even better.)
New portal looks kinda cool too.
Sorting, scanning, indexing and tagging all those loose files must be a Herculean yet monotonously thankless chore. So thanks to all the volunteers and donors for enabling this invaluable resource to exist.
https://acrmuseum.org/
My buddy took me on a Silicon Valley tour when I lived there , we hit up the HP Garage, Apple Garage, Intel Museum & the Computer History Museum in one day.
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I mean, come on folks, you need to up your game.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PLATO_(computer_system)
https://www.geekwire.com/sponsor-post/get-wonderful-toys-acq...
For example, they apparently have 23 U-Matic tapes of the HOPL (History of Programming Languages) conference in 1978 [1].
The proceedings [2] describe one of the tapes that don't make it into the transcribed proceedings:
> The after-dinner speeches at the conference banquet were devoted to humorous reminiscences and anecdotes about the languages and events during their development. The banquet anecdotes are not included in this volume because, although they are humorous to hear, the voice inflections make a big difference, and they are not necessarily amusing to read.
[1] https://www.computerhistory.org/collections/catalog/10269512... [2] https://dl.acm.org/doi/book/10.1145/800025