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.
Guest Blog
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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, 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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Guest Blog
Fearless Genius: The Digital Revolution in Silicon Valley, 1985–2000
Monday, July 7, 2014
For fifteen years I documented the efforts of a secretive tribe of engineers, entrepreneurs, and venture capitalists in Silicon Valley as they created technology that would change our culture, our behavior, and challenge what it means to be human.
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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
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Guest Blog
The Very First ‘Stevenote’
Monday, January 27, 2014
On January 26, 2014, the Computer History Museum released this never-before-seen video of the first public showing of Macintosh. Thirty years ago, on January 30, 1984, Steve Jobs came to Boston to introduce his groundbreaking new computer to members of the world’s largest personal computer organization.
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Guest Blog
Indigenous Circuits
Thursday, January 2, 2014
The Internet and computing have become an absolutely integral part of everyday life. Some would say too much so. As debates about whether we are too chained to our digital devices continue to flourish, historians and other humanists find themselves asking different questions. Where did these devices come from, whose
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Guest Blog
Computer Pioneers: Photos from the Field
Wednesday, December 11, 2013
The vibrant social processes of science are dramatically visible at conferences, workshops, seminars, and other gatherings of researchers. The main events are typically presentations by invited senior speakers or aspiring young researchers who have won the approval of reviewers. The audience members listen and watch th
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Behind the Scenes, Guest Blog
Restoring the IBM 1401
Wednesday, November 20, 2013
Is anyone willing to lead a project to restore an IBM 1401?” Mike Cheponis enthusiastically asked with a glint in his eye. I knew Mike after attending several of his DEC PDP-1 restoration sessions at the Computer History Museum. While most of my late night college hours were spent on DEC, UNIVAC, and SDS computers, I h
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Guest Blog
Brograms and the Power of Vaporware
Wednesday, March 27, 2013
Recently, Google’s Sergey Brin made waves—or at least invoked a collective eye-roll—when he termed current smartphone technology “emasculating” and suggested Google glass as an antidote. Offering a pair of computer-infused glasses as the solution to the problem of technological emasculation seems as though it might be
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Guest Blog
Rebooting the WITCH: News from The National Museum of Computing at Bletchley Park, UK
Thursday, January 24, 2013
Two months ago, we celebrated the completion of a three-year project to restore the world’s oldest original digital computer back to full working order and to re-assert its place as a Guinness World Record where it was first acknowledged as the world’s most durable computer in 1973. To our surprise and delight, our new