Computer History Museum - CA, USA

[mrad01]

Spent some time touring around silicon valley last week and went to Apple, Google etc - but one of the highlights was certainly the CHM. If you are in San Francisco - do it. Incredible.

It starts thousands of years back and leads you through a pretty good progression of "computing". Starts making sense to a person like me when I start recognising things like Babbage (saw the difference engine actually working - they demo it), IBM card sorters, ENIAC, UNIVAC, Remington RAND etc.

Then things really start looking "real" when you see CDC and DIGITAL start showing up. PDPs, CRAY-1, Thinking Machines, the works. All these machines are on display with video/audio history consoles to listen to. Very well done.

8 bit micros. The section which I recognised 95% of the hardware. Mad. Apple I (signed by Woz), the trinity (TRS-80, PET, Apple II), then C64s, BBCs, Sinclairs.... then 16 bits, Mac, Lisa, Amiga, PC... great displays.

The section dedicated to gaming was great too. The *actual* PONG unit that was installed in the first pub is on display (donated by Al Acorn himself) and all the major consoles on display with some playable demos.

The last section was handheld with Newton, Palm, Psion etc finishing with a section on software & internet.

A few pics (make your browser window > 1024px to see all):

[tezza]

Interesting news and great photos. I want display racks like that eventually for my own collection.

Is the trip for work or a holiday. One of my bucket list things is to go to one of those Vintage Computer meets in the U.S. at some stage.

[mrad01]

I'm here for a bit of a holiday and to work out what is happening in the "mobile dev" space (I spend a lot of my time writing apps for iOS and Android). New York City is another world I tell you...

I went to a place called Video Game New York today and found they have a few vintage computers sitting out the back. Saw an Atari Portfolio (16bit palmtop) and a few other bits. Interesting place.