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.
Internet History Program
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Curatorial Insights, Internet History Program
If the Computer Fits, Wear It
Tuesday, June 30, 2015
People wear the technology of their time. The stone-working techniques that made weapons also shaped beads for the body. When weaving was new, the intertwined warp and woof that made water-tight baskets also formed clothes. Smelting produced daggers and bracelets alike. Some technologies started off wearable – Galileo’
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Curatorial Insights, Internet History Program
What Do Anniversaries Mean? Internet Protocols at 40
Friday, April 10, 2015
This past 10 May 2014 marked 40 years since Vint Cerf and Bob Kahn published a paper hammering out the rudiments of the standard that would become known as “the” Internet: TCP, or Transport Control Protocol, later expanded to TCP/IP. The two ARPAnet alums had done the main work in a frenzied two-day burst while holed u
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Curatorial Insights, Internet History Program
Where to? A History of Autonomous Vehicles
Thursday, May 8, 2014
When Robert Whitehead invented the self-propelled torpedo in the 1860s, the early guidance system for maintaining depth was so new and essential he called it “The Secret.” Airplanes got autopilots just a decade after the Wright brothers. These days, your breakfast cereal was probably gathered by a driverless harvester.
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Curatorial Insights, Internet History Program
Happy 25th Birthday to the World Wide Web!
Tuesday, March 11, 2014
Twenty five years ago this month, Tim Berners-Lee first proposed what became the World Wide Web. Today it is living up to its ambitious name, serving three billion people with many more yet to come. To mark the anniversary, we’re telling the story of those early days in this article and in our annual issue of Core m
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Curatorial Insights, Internet History Program
MediaView: The nearly forgotten NeXT program that helped save the Open Web
Thursday, September 12, 2013
If Steve Jobs hadn’t gotten kicked out of Apple in 1985, the Web might look very different today. But not for the reasons most people might think.Angry and deeply hurt, the arrogant, hard-to-control young entrepreneur sent a pointed message with the name of his next company: NeXT, Inc. The matte black cube computers he
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Curatorial Insights, Internet History Program
Exhibiting the Online World
Wednesday, July 3, 2013
Whether you’re a Maasai tribesman buying and selling cattle on your mobile phone, or a Norwegian bride to the altar with the groom you met online, it’s hard to think of an area of modern life that’s not being radically changed by the Web, the Internet, and mobile data. It is also hard to think of a field where even the
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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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Remarkable People, Internet History Program
Robert W. Taylor, 2013 CHM Fellow
Tuesday, April 23, 2013
Bob Taylor planned to be a Methodist minister, like his father. He ended up an evangelist for an idea that changed the world: easy-to-use computers that talk to each other. “I was never interested in the computer as a mathematical device, but as a communication device,” Taylor said.
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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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Behind the Scenes, Internet History Program
The Other Internet, Part II: Cambridge to Kenya
Wednesday, January 16, 2013
With his clipped red hair, freckled ruddy skin, and open yet no-nonsense manner, Nick Hughes could play a British army officer in the movies. But this quietly effective former geologist is the architect of the world’s leading mobile payment system, one that has changed daily life in Kenya and offers a possible glimpse