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.jpg) The Computer History Museum's front entrance | |
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Former names | The Computer Museum |
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| Established | 1996; 29 years ago (1996) |
| Location | Mountain View, California,US |
| Coordinates | 37°24′52″N122°04′37″W / 37.414371°N 122.076817°W /37.414371; -122.076817 |
| Type | History and Technology Museum |
| Collection size | Over 1 million objects |
| CEO | Marc Etkind |
| Website | computerhistory |
TheComputer History Museum (CHM) is acomputer museum inMountain View, California. The museum presents stories and artifacts ofSilicon Valley and theInformation Age, and explores thecomputing revolution and its impact on society.
The museum's origins date to 1968 whenGordon Bell began a quest for a historical collection and, at that same time, others were looking to preserve theWhirlwind computer. The resultingMuseum Project had its first exhibit in 1975, located in a converted coat closet in aDEC lobby. In 1978, the museum, nowThe Digital Computer Museum (TDCM), moved to a larger DEC lobby inMarlborough, Massachusetts and opened to the public in September 1979.[1]Maurice Wilkes presented the first lecture at TDCM in 1979 – the presentation of such lectures has continued to the present time.
TDCM incorporated asThe Computer Museum (TCM) in 1982. In 1984, TCM moved toBoston, locating onMuseum Wharf.
In 1996/1997, the TCM History Center (TCMHC) was established; a site atMoffett Field was provided byNASA (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 theBoston Museum of Science, so the name TCMHC was changed toComputer History Museum (CHM) in 2000.
In 2002, CHM opened its new building, previously occupied bySilicon Graphics, at 1401 N. Shoreline Blvd in Mountain View, California, to the public.[1]
In 2009, CHM hosted theNational Inventors Hall of Fame's annual induction ceremony, the venue significant as that year's fifteen inductees were all contributors to semiconductor technology and 2009 marked the golden jubilee of theintegrated circuit.[2]
The facility was later heavily renovated and underwent a two-year $19 million makeover before reopening in January 2011.[3]
John Hollar, a former media executive, was appointed CEO in July 2008.[4] Dan'l Lewin, a former technology executive, replaced Hollar as CEO in March 2018.[5] CHM appointed formerNASA Communications Leader Marc Etkind as its next President and Chief Executive Officer on February 19th, 2025.[6]
The Computer History Museum hosts regular public programs (currently under the "CHM Live" banner) with notable leaders (past and present) from Silicon Valley and the global tech sector, including past speakers such as Mark Zuckerberg, Reid Hoffman, Elon Musk, and Eric Schmidt, as well as academics, historians, and others on the impact of technology. The Museum also produces special events marking key anniversaries, such as the 40th Anniversary of the Apple Macintosh and the 50th Anniversary of Ethernet, featuring panels reflecting on the history and impact of key computing technologies.
Recordings of the Museum's past events are viewable on its YouTube channel.
The Museum also hosts TechFest events for families.
The Computer History Museum claims to house the largest and most significant collection of computing artifacts in the world.[a] This includes many rare or one-of-a-kind objects such as aCray-1 supercomputer as well as aCray-2,Cray-3, theUtah teapot, the 1969Neiman MarcusKitchen Computer, anApple I, and an example of the first generation ofGoogle's racks of custom-designedweb servers.[8] The collection comprises nearly 90,000 objects, photographs and films, as well as 4,000 ft (1,200 m) of cataloged documentation and several hundredgigabytes of software.
The CHM oral history program conducts video interviews around the history of computing, this includes computer systems,networking,data-processing,memory, anddata-storage. There are over 1,000 interviews recorded as of 2021, including panel discussions on the origins of theIBM PC and thehard disk drive, and individual interviews withJoanna Hoffman,Steve Chen,Dame Stephanie Shirley, andDonald Knuth.[9]
The museum's 25,000 sq ft (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 theabacus to theInternet. The entire exhibition is also available online.[10][11][12]
On January 28, 2017, the Museum launched a 6,000 sq ft (560 m2) exhibit "Make Software: Change the World!" The exhibit covers how people's lives are transformed by software. Designed for middle schoolers and up, it features multimedia and touchscreen interactives, including a software lab where visitors can explore coding hands-on.[13]
Other exhibits include a restoration of an historicPDP-1minicomputer, two restoredIBM 1401 computers, and a restored IBM Ramac 350 disk drive.[14]
An operatingdifference engine designed byCharles Babbage in the 1840s and constructed by theScience Museum of London was on display until January 31, 2016. It had been on loan since 2008 from its owner,Nathan Myhrvold, a former Microsoft executive.[15]
The CHM is also home to an extensive collection of software, curated by Al Kossow, a former employee ofApple Computer whom the museum hired in 2006. Kossow is responsible for preservation and accession of software in the museum, as well as for developing CHM's software-themed exhibitions. Kossow was a contributor to the museum long before being hired full-time and is the proprietor of Bitsavers, a large onlinerepository of historical computer manuals and archived software andfirmware acquired from his own collection and through donations from his peers.[16][17][18]
In 2010 the museum began with the collection ofsource code of important software, beginning with Apple'sMacPaint 1.3, written in a combination ofassembly language andPascal and available as download for the public.[19][20]
Many other accessions have followed over the years.APL programming language was received in 2012.[21]Adobe donated thePhotoshop 1.0.1 source code in 2013,[22][23] and Postscript in 2022.[24]Microsoft followed with the source code donation ofSCP MS-DOS 1.25 and a mixture ofAltos MS-DOS 2.11 andTeleVideo PC DOS 2.11 as well asWord for Windows 1.1a under their own license.[25][26] On October 21, 2014,Xerox Alto's source code was released.[27] On January 19, 2023, theApple Lisa source code was released to the public.[28]
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On June 23, 1990, the Walk-Through Computer exhibit opened to help visitors learn how computers work.[29] The interactive exhibit included adesktop computer, a giantmonitor, a 25-foot (7.6 m)keyboard, and a 40-inch (1,016 mm) diametertrackball (initially planned to be a "bumper-car sized mouse") used by visitors to control the World Traveler program. In the Software Theater, animation and hardware video is used alongside a video feed of the World Traveler Program to show how computer programs work.[30] This exhibit was closed on August 5, 1995, and re-opened as the Walk-Through Computer 2000 on October 21, 1995, to include an updated monitor,3D graphics, and more interactive features. One of these features allowed visitors to change the pits imprinted on a giantCD-ROM, and the changes are seen on a monitor.[31]
In 2016, the museum had aLiquid Galaxy in the "Going Places: A History of Silicon Valley" exhibit. The exhibit had 20 preselected locations that visitors can fly to on the Liquid Galaxy.[32] An exhibit on the history ofautonomous vehicles, fromtorpedoes toself-driving cars was also on display.
The CHM Fellow Awards Program honors distinguished technology pioneers for their outstanding merits and significant contributions to the advancement of computing and the evolution of the digital age. The CHM Fellows are men and women 'whose ideas have changed the world [and] affected nearly every human alive today'. The first fellow was Rear AdmiralGrace Hopper in 1987. The fellows program has grown to 100 members as of 2024.[33] Fellow nominations are open to the public and are accepted year round.[34]
With the permission of the Palo Alto Research Center, the Computer History Museum is pleased to make available, for non-commercial use only, snapshots of Alto source code, executables, documentation, font files, and other files from 1975 to 1987.
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