A visit to the Computer History Museum.

Undoubtedly, a place that would be any geek's downfall. The Computer History Museum was created in 1996 in Mountain View, California, at the very heart of Sillicon Valley, a stone's throw from Googleplex. The Museum is dedicated to preserve the artefacts from computing era as well as to present the stories behind each one of them, their evolution and impact in our lives.

The Computer History Museum is home to the biggest and most important computing collection of the world. Among its objects it can be seen the super computers Cray-1 and Cray-3, a model of the Utah Teapot (used in the 3D renders), an Apple I, a Babbage machine (a purely mechanical calculator) designed in 1847-1849 and that was rebuilt based on the original blueprints, a replica of the Atanasoff-Berry computer, the Palm Pilot telephone (pioneer of the age of mobile computing), among other hundreds of rarities. The collections consists of about 90.000 objects, photographs and movies, as well as 1.200 metres of catalogued documents and several hundreds of software gigabytes.

Inside the wide facilities there are several thematic areas, we have the area on the history of videogames consoles, the history of the supercomputers, personal computers and the one on computer chess games.

The versatile, venerable abacus. Perhaps the oldest continuosiy used calcuating tool aside from fingers, the abacus is a masterpiece of power and simplicity. Abacuses were widely use in Asia and Europe for centuries, and remain common today.

Herman Hollerith was an American statistician who invented the tabulator or censor machine, based on drilled cards.
He is considered to be the first programmer, meaning, the first one in achieving the automatic treatment of information.

During the Great Depression, a new law brought hope and innovation. The data from 26 millions of americans were saved for the Social Security Program in the country in 1930 on cards from IBM.

"Think" signs, IBM, US, ca. 1965. Sometimes parodied outside the company, the classic IBM "THINK" sign was a feature in many IBM offices from the 1920s to the 1970S. The "THINK" concept, relfecting the company mantra of individual initiative, originated with IBM founder Thomas J. Watson, Sr. when he was at NCR. Shown here are Thinks signs for use around the world, in Chinese, French, Portuguese, Spanish, and English, and one written using Braille.

ENIAC, an acronym for Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer, used by the Balistic Investigation Laboratory of the American Army. It is considered frequently as the first electronic computer for a general purpose, although this title belongs actually to a german computer, The Z3.

ENIAC on a Chip, University of Pennsylvania, US, 1995. In celebration of ENIAC's 50th Anniversary, the machine was reimplemented using modern integrated circuit technology. The room-sized computer could now fit in the palm of your hand.

The UNIVAC I ( Universal Automatic Computer) was the first commercial computer made in The United States.
It was the first computer made for a non-militar purpose, since 1951.

The Semi-Automatic Ground Environment (SAGE) was an automated control system for tracking and intercepting enemy bomber aircraft used by NORAD from the late 1950s into the 1980s

Dr. C. Walton Lillehei made a pacemaker that had leads attached directly to the outer wall of the heart. Later, in 1958, a battery was added as the power source, making the pacemaker truly portable, which allowed patients to be mobile.

In the museum web page: www.computerhistory.org, you can appreciate some of the exhibitions on-line.