Computer History Museum
Last night’s MashupCamp took place at the amazing Computer History Museum in Mountain View California which has a huge collection of computers going back to the dawn of the computer age. It included computers like UNIVAC, Digital Equipment PDP and Vax’s, Cray Supercomputers, components from SAGE and computers from Control Data, Philco, Fairchild, IBM, Altair and many more.
Here are some photos I shot in the Visible Storage area (most look better when viewed full size, so you can see all of the detail). Man, I could have staying in that room for days!
If you are familiar with any of these computers or even better worked with any of them, please help me identity what each one is by adding Flickr tags and comments to the photoset. Please include any great stories stories you might have about any of these machines.
UPDATE 1: More photos shot by Niall Kennedy last year.
UPDATE 2: On a related note, Mike Kuniavsky has been assembling a great photoset called Thrift Store UI, which is made up of old computer devices he’s been finding at thrift stores.
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on Friday, February 24th, 2006 at 3:20 pm
I visited this museum for the first time in December. It was awesome. I especially like how they have the tour organized, so it starts with the abbicus (spelled wrong, I’m sure), then to the original IBM census machined used in 1880 and on to the Cray computers. It was great seeing the evolution of computers. I recommend that anyone with an interest in computers try to visit this museum.
on Friday, February 24th, 2006 at 8:19 pm
Your first time there? My company had our holiday party at the Computer History Museum this year. Definitely an interesting atmosphere when youre all dolled up. I can’t imagine how they don’t get a little nervous about people drinking around historic equipment though :P Anyway, it’s actually a cool place for an event.
on Sunday, February 26th, 2006 at 2:57 am
Amazing photos. Did they have the compaq computers from the 80’s, the ones that were like a suitcase? I remember seeing one in my Aunt’s house, it was such a relic and she told me that it was an early version of a laptop. The thing weighed a ton and looked like a huge white suitcase.