Re-Opened Computer History Museum Explored

gosand writes "An article over at OSNews gives a nice overview of the recently re-opened Computer History Museum in Mountain View, CA. There are some good pictures in the article, and also at the Museum's website. They have a lot of very interesting computers, including an Apple I (signed by Woz), an Enigma machine, and Crays 1, 2, and 3 (yes, there was a 3!) Maybe you have something sitting in your basement that you would like to donate?"

Comments

Let's get this out of the way.

[Chess_the_cat]

What the Museum does not look for in a donation: It's difficult for us to turn people away when they have taken the time to contact us about a particular item. Sadly, we must do this when the item in question is something the Museum already has or has decided does not meet our criteria. Some of the items the Museum can no longer accept include: IBM PC IBM PC Jr Commodore PET Commodore 64 Commodore VIC-20 Apple II (+/c/e) TI 99/4 Timex Sinclair

Re:Let's get this out of the way.

[Computer History Mus]

Yep. Site went down. Thanks all for the vote of popularity. Server has been reoptimized for the flood and should be able to handle it.

While we're not running on the Altair, our Apache daemon had all those nice friendly timeouts and keepalives active for the leisurely browser, not for the flood of hits of getting slashdotted.

To dispell the foreseeable endless debate regarding what the museum is about, and whether or not we're an international museum, you just have to visit in person.
http://www.computerhistory.org/about/tour/

We have THE LARGEST collection of computing artifacts in the world. Period. The site doesn't do it justice at the moment, but keep an eye out.. lots to come.

The collection does include international representative machines, including a great deal from the UK. Only about 10% of our collection is actually on display, and even less is currently available on the web. If you want to help us change that, come volunteer.

We have a great volunteer pool and are always looking for people excited about computing to come and help out.

Director of IT and Webmaster
webmaster@computerhistory.org

Stuff they don't accept...

[calebb]

Hahah, they have a section on their site for donations:

It's difficult for us to turn people away when ... Some of the items the Museum can no longer accept include:

• IBM PC
• Commodore 64

I guess they put this section on their website for a reason, right? Do people really think a C64 is that old? Speaking of Commodores, a nice C64 emulator for Pocket PC's was recently released. (It runs great on an h5555 iPAQ - It's been providing me with hours of entertainment... oh yeah, Archon II: Adept) /nostalgia

There was a useful link in this section on finding local PC recyclers: There's even one in Seattle that recycles, repairs & redistributes old computers to local nonprofit organizations. Very cool! Sites like this need more publicity.

Re:The whole internet, on a single piece of 8.5x11

[Computer History Mus]

The router is still on display.

In order to keep it from getting more fingerprints and dirt, and to remove the gumming up tape that held it up, the diagram was taken off the side of the IMP where it lived in the moffett warehouse.

That diagram was of over 20 nodes and generated by a plotter, not hand drawn.. the cooler diagrams are of the first two and four nodes, and those are handwritten.

A brief internet history on the site covers these and more.

that Engima machine

[chongo]

As one of the people who helped restore the Enigma machine at the History Center, I can attest to the fact that it is genuine. A few years ago, the donated Enigma machine was not in working order. It took a several work sessions to get it operational (cleaning, wire repair, replacement bulbs (of the same type and era), switch repair, etc...) The machine lacked 2 of the 5 rotor types, so another member did a lot of hard leg work to get a loan of some authentic rotors from a TLA.

The Enigma is a bit cranky. The mechanical contact switches in the keyboard need to be cleaned more often and one might guess. The Enigma is not very ergonomic either ... :-)

We used that Enigma machine to encrypt a real message that was known to have been broken by the folks at Bletchley Park. Some 60 years ago, their code cracking machine took ~2h 45m to search about 1/2 the key space (during which several false positives turned up) before the real key was found. Turing's algorithm, ported to a stock Cray 1, took 30 seconds to find the same key.

The Cray 1, designed in the mid 70's, was only 330 times faster than the special purpose Bletchley Park code cracking complex. That 1940's technology used at Bletchley Park was truly amazing for its time.

p.s. Not only does the Computer History museum have a Cray 1, 2 and 3; it has one of every major model that Cray designed going way back to his early CDC days and his special Navy machine.