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.
From the Collection
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From the Collection, Guest Blog
The Boston Computer Society: Dawn of the Business Personal Computer and Cost-Efficient Home PC
Tuesday, January 5, 2016
This is the second of five video releases of Boston Computer Society (BCS) General Meetings, by the Computer History Museum.
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From the Collection
First Steps: Lectures from the Dawn of Computing
Wednesday, November 4, 2015
From the Collection
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From the Collection, Guest Blog
The Boston Computer Society Presents: 1981 Forum on the Future of Personal Computers
Wednesday, September 16, 2015
This is the first of five video releases of The Boston Computer Society (BCS) General Meetings, by the Computer History Museum.
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From the Collection
Electronic Arts DeluxePaint Early Source Code
Wednesday, July 22, 2015
By the mid-1980s, mass-produced personal computers had finally become powerful enough to be used for graphics. Apple had released their drawing program MacPaint [5] with the first Macintosh in 1984. But at $2500 the Mac was expensive, and it only displayed black and white images.
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Curatorial Insights, From the Collection
The World’s Smallest Computer
Thursday, March 26, 2015
Curatorial Insight, From the Collection
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Curatorial Insights, From the Collection
Yesterday’s Tomorrows: The Origins of The Tablet
Wednesday, December 17, 2014
By 1987, the PC revolution was well entrenched and underway. Desktop PCs were standard hardware for home enthusiasts, businesses, government agencies, and computer labs tucked away in college campuses. However, some prognosticators were also fast at work forecasting the future of a new generation of computing devices –
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From the Collection, Guest Blog
Xerox Alto Source Code
Tuesday, October 21, 2014
Depending on your age, your first computer might have been an Apple II, a Radio Shack TRS-80, an IBM PC, an Apple Macintosh, or another of the early personal computers. If you missed these early machines the first time around, perhaps you have seen them in the Personal Computer section of the Revolution exhibit at the
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From the Collection
Early Digital Research CP/M Source Code
Wednesday, October 1, 2014
By the time personal computers based on microprocessors began to emerge in the mid-1970s, programmers had been writing operating systems for about twenty years. Big mainframe computers had operating systems that were huge and complicated, created from hundreds of thousands of lines of code. But other operating systems,
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From the Collection, Guest Blog, Software History Center
The Cryotron: Extremely Rare Superconducting Digital Circuits Come to CHM
Thursday, July 31, 2014
In the early 1950s, a young, enthusiastic and creative electrical engineer named Dudley Buck left the National Security Agency (NSA) for the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Buck had worked on some of the first electronic digital computers at the NSA, and in Massachusetts joined the large program to develop
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From the Collection, Guest Blog
The Juniper M40 Router
Monday, June 23, 2014
Early in 2014, the Computer History Museum added a Juniper M40 router to its collection. This router, initially released in 1998, was the first internet router to use custom-designed silicon to accelerate the movement of internet traffic in the largest nation-wide internet backbone networks. The M40 launched a race th