Groups and Locations

history, science, computer, archive, technology, electronics, museum

The Computer History Museum is a visitor attraction, archive and deposit centre for the history of computing and computer culture, based in California's Silicon Valley. The Museum's associated website will be of interest to researchers mainly for a section on access to its collections, begun in the 1970s and now numbering many thousands of items, grouped under the headings Artefacts, Documentation, Software, Media (audiovisual footage) and Ephemera. Eventually the catalogues for all collections will be digitised and placed online; at present only the Artefacts catalogue is available, accessed through a keyword search facility. The site also provides a few "online exhibits": a history of the Internet (to 1992) with narrative discussion; a timeline charting the development of the microprocessor; and photographs and brief details of several of the Museum's artefact holdings. Another feature is a more general timeline, covering the period 1945 to 1990. Short summaries of individual events from the established historiography of computing are presented: the subheadings under which they are classified -- "computers"; "people and pop culture"; "software"; "components"; "robots and artificial intelligence"; "networks"; "companies" -- define the scope of the survey. The tone is concise, poppy, and sometimes unreasonably glib (1970: "Vietnam War protesters attacked university computer centers. At the University of Wisconsin, the toll was one human and four machines"): the material may be of help to some beginning students looking for an overview of the field, but is unlikely to be better than the established print sources. In addition, the site gives details of the museum's location, staff and current events, including lecture series.