alt Hacker NewsComputer History Museum Launches Digital Portal to Its Collection
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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.
If you're into this and you're ever in Bozeman Montana, check out the American Computer and Robotics Museum. It's excellent!
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.
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 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.
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
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.
I have come across (and enjoyed) many of the videos [1] they have posted to YouTube.
This is realllly cool. I have a rabbit hole to go down into tonight
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...
This one has always been a favorite: https://computerhistory.org/blog/the-two-napkin-protocol/
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.
Related, of the more in-person variety:
Favorite Tech Museums
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...