Computer History Museum Launches Digital Portal to Its Collection | Hacker News Reader

Computer History Museum Launches Digital Portal to Its Collection

computerhistory.org

188 pointsChrisArchitect39 comments

Very cool stuff.

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...

CHM employee here. Always great to see CHM on HN. Glad folks are excited about this -- as are we! There's so much cool stuff in the Collection.

Great initiative - so now let me throw a query:

* Why isn't the Lewis Terman OH https://www.computerhistory.org/collections/catalog/10265394... showing up in the main link?

* Also, not related to Oral Histories, but could CHM update their historical narrative to include the Vannevar Bush-designed computers that the NSA's predecessor OP-20-g used? https://www.governmentattic.org/8docs/NSA-WasntAllMagic_2002.... ; In so doing, I feel CHM needs to further neutralized its Silicon Valley centered-ness. Fred Terman may be the godfather of Silicon Valley, but even godfathers once needed thesis advisors, and his had the initials 'VB'.

The picture of the 4004 and 8008 are super low res

Does the digital portal also link to emulators (and documentation) for historical systems? I've always enjoyed things like:

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.)

I have come across (and enjoyed) many of the videos [1] they have posted to YouTube.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/@ComputerHistory

The oral histories they post are priceless. Pick any company or topic of significance and odds are good they've talked to somebody who was in the thick of it.

Same! They are so good.

Visiting it a few weeks ago was amazing too!

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.

I suppose that means the museum is doing its job then: educate people totally ignorant of the history of computing. Next time that younger person sees a floppy disk they will know what it is.

Absolutely!

You mean the real-life save icons?

I've seen my own work in that museum. I felt super old!

I own things that are in the museum which makes me feel old too!

Link: https://www.computerhistory.org/collections/catalog

If you're into this and you're ever in Bozeman Montana, check out the American Computer and Robotics Museum. It's excellent!

https://acrmuseum.org/

One of the best days ever: took my boys to CHM where they got to play Space War on a PDP-1 against the man that programmed it!

Google Maps says people spend 0.5-3 hours there. I spent 6.5 because it was so amazing. Highly recommended.

A similar experience for me was the Connections Museum in Seattle: I came just after opening, and time flew by such that I was surprised when they told me they were closing up

I was able to go to the Living Computer Museum and I got there when they first opened and wound up staying until closing time. I was just so into all the stuff there :-)

I hope to visit the ICM on my next trip to Seattle, though I suspect that won't be as grand as the original Living Computer Museum

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.

[1] https://www.computerhistory.org/collections/catalog/10269512... [2] https://dl.acm.org/doi/book/10.1145/800025

I've been to this museum ~10 times. It never gets old. I take everyone I know there. I like to see their reactions.

New portal looks kinda cool too.

Ooh check out the Discovery wall! I see a Furby, a Power Glove (call AVGN) and a Ninja Turtles NES Game: https://www.computerhistory.org/collections/discovery

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 one has always been a favorite: https://computerhistory.org/blog/the-two-napkin-protocol/

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

Related, of the more in-person variety:

Favorite Tech Museums

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46504220

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.

CHM is great, but I still lament the closure and liquidation of Paul Allen's Living Computers Museum + Labs, which I never got to visit.

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.)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PLATO_(computer_system)

https://www.geekwire.com/sponsor-post/get-wonderful-toys-acq...

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).

https://www.governmentattic.org/8docs/NSA-WasntAllMagic_2002...

There's solid representation of Boston and DEC in particular, for example, as well as IBM, so not all /that/ "Silicon-Valley-legacy-centric".

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Computer_Museum,_Boston#Co...

Actually that link was helpful, thanks. The fact that CHM's early progenitor was called Digital Computer Museum in a 1979 out of Boston actually explains a lot. They were fundamentally distinguishing lineage from the likes of differentia analyzers, and (to a more muddled degree), from Rapid Selectors / Rapid Comparators.

The living computer museum used to have SSH access for their vintage systems.

The "interim computer museum" has some (most?) of that now: https://icm.museum/?faq

This is realllly cool. I have a rabbit hole to go down into tonight

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.

CHM was a fun visit in person, but type "TRS-80" into their online search catalog and you get:

NO RESULTS FOUND, PLEASE TRY BROADENING YOUR SEARCH OR SUBMITTING A NEW KEYWORD

I mean, come on folks, you need to up your game.

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