CHM Blog
The CHM blog showcases ideas and insights from our vibrant community in Silicon Valley and around the world. We take you behind the scenes of our programming, collections, and exhibits. Connecting the past to the present and into the future, we decode technology for everyone.
Curatorial Insights
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Curatorial Insights, Internet History Program
Happy 40th Birthday, Ethernet!
Tuesday, May 21, 2013
40 years ago on May 23rd, 1973, a young researcher named Bob Metcalfe outlined his new “Ethernet” concept in a memo to his managers at Xerox PARC. Radio and hardware wizard Dave Boggs turned it into a working reality, the network that would connect Alto computers to each other, and to laser printers, and remote servers
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Curatorial Insights
Pixar’s Luxo Jr.
Wednesday, May 1, 2013
Perhaps the single most iconic character in the history of computer graphics isn’t a representation of a living thing. It’s a desk lamp.
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Curatorial Insights, Internet History Program
Endangered Online Worlds
Wednesday, March 6, 2013
In the beginning the net was mostly non-commercial, but that began to change as it grew in leaps and bounds. Soon millions around the nation had online access, at home and at work, and the stage was set. The first money-making sites were, of course, about personals ads and about sex. But then entrepreneurs began to lau
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Curatorial Insights
Suffering for Science
Wednesday, December 19, 2012
Curatorial Insight
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Curatorial Insights
Why Software is Eating, and Changing, the World
Friday, December 7, 2012
The writer and futurist Arthur C. Clarke said, “The Information Age offers much to mankind... But it is vital to remember that information — in the sense of raw data — is not knowledge, that knowledge is not wisdom, and that wisdom is not foresight. But information is the first essential step to all of these.”
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Curatorial Insights
Gulliver’s Engine
Wednesday, November 28, 2012
Sometimes, we can look back at fictional items from the days before the computer and see threads to machines that would exist decades, or even centuries later. When the museum opened Revolution: The First 2000 Years of Computing, a visitor pointed out that we didn’t mention what they considered to be the earliest descr
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Curatorial Insights
Guinness World Records Day
Thursday, November 15, 2012
November 15th marks Guinness World Records Day, a day when Guinness challenges the world at large to break as many records as possible within a 24-hour period. In honor of Guinness’s Day, here are 10 amazing Guinness World Records related to computer history.
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Curatorial Insights
Have you got a prediction for us, UNIVAC?
Wednesday, November 7, 2012
The year 2012 marks another step in a familiar quadrennial cycle. A cycle culminating in an event that demands global attention and that has people in awe of the amount of effort and money spent to ensure that the competitors reach their peak with meticulous timing. I am not talking about the 2012 Summer Olympic Games
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Curatorial Insights
The Haunted House
Wednesday, October 31, 2012
Every city has one: a house that scares all the local kids. Sometimes, these houses have long, dark histories that seem to have been created by horror authors in the distant, misty past. Other times, it’s merely their long-standing dereliction that lets the mind wonder what sort of evil dwells within. These creaky, cre
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Curatorial Insights
Little Green Men
Friday, October 19, 2012
Before moving up a couple of exits on Highway 101N, to our current location at 1401 North Shoreline Blvd., CHM and part of its collection were housed in a WWII-era Quonset hut at Moffett Field.