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.
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Curatorial Insights
Portraits of Silicon Valley Tech Pioneers: The Legacy of Hal Hohbach
Wednesday, December 5, 2018
Hal Hohbach spent more than 40 years working as a patent attorney, developer, and investor, including serving on the board of Sutter Hill Ventures. His admiration for the persistence and contributions of inventors culminated in his commissioning of a modern-day version of Christian Schussele’s 1862 composite portrait o
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From the Collection, Guest Blog
The Whirlwind Computer at CHM
Friday, November 30, 2018
Although much of Whirlwind was lost when the machine was decommissioned, the Computer History Museum and the MIT Museum retain many of the machine’s components, some of which are on display in CHM’s permanent exhibition, Revolution: The First 2000 Years of Computing.
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CHM Live, Exponential Center
Hacking Our Security: Digital Resilience for the Next Cyber Threat
Tuesday, November 20, 2018
On October 23, Ray Rothrock, chairman and CEO of cybersecurity analytics firm RedSeal and national security expert and Brunswick Partner Siobhan Gorman discussed Rothrock’s timely new book, Digital Resilience: Is Your Company Ready for the Next Cyber Threat?
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Education
CHM Challenges Broadcom MASTERS Finalists with Raspberry Pi & Logic Gates
Thursday, November 1, 2018
Broadcom MASTERS is a program founded and produced by the Society for Science & the Public that seeks to inspire young scientists, engineers, and innovators who will solve the grand challenges of the future. The 8th annual competition took place in Washington, DC, on October 19−23, and two of CHM’s fearless educators w
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Curatorial Insights, From the Collection, Software History Center
An Inflection Point in the History of Multimedia: Video Ethnographies of Visual Almanac and News Navigator
Thursday, October 18, 2018
CHM's Software History Center has been conducting “video ethnographies” to record and preserve the experience of running historical software. Over the course of 2018, the center has conducted two video ethnographies surrounding a key moment at the end of the late 1980s and early 1990s, the birth of multimedia. Watch an
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From the Collection, Museum News
New Grant Will Highlight Software’s History, User and Maker Stories, and Ongoing Global Impact
Thursday, October 18, 2018
CHM has received a National Historical Publications and Records Commission: Access to Historical Records grant to process material related to software history. The collections in CHM’s Software History Processing Project (SHiPP) represent a deep and broad resource for understanding software’s impact on society.
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CHM Live, Exponential Center
Leading Man: Inspired Stories From a Silicon Valley Icon
Friday, October 5, 2018
Storytelling can “engage the heart” and inspire people to follow your vision, according to John Hennessy, Alphabet chairman and former president of Stanford University. He and moderator Marissa Mayer, cofounder of Lumi Labs and former president and CEO of Yahoo, recently discussed some of the leadership stories and adv
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Curatorial Insights, Remarkable People
Who Invented the Microprocessor?
Thursday, September 20, 2018
The microprocessor is hailed as one of the most significant engineering milestones of all time. The lack of a generally agreed definition of the term has supported many claims to be the inventor of the microprocessor. This article describes a chronology of early approaches to integrating the primary building blocks of
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Exponential Center
Artifact Stories: A Tradition of Disruption, Innovation & Exponential Impact
Thursday, September 13, 2018
Exponential Center 2018 interns—Maya, Yuki, Catherine, and Hannah—gathered a lot of knowledge about Silicon Valley and its ecosystem during their internship. They've each picked one of their favorite artifacts in the Museum’s collection to share some of the information and insights they gained during their time at CHM.
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CHM Live, Curatorial Insights, Software History Center
Navigating the Quantum Computing Frontier
Friday, August 24, 2018
Perhaps you are like me: You’ve aware that quantum computing is a hot topic today but have a nagging feeling that you don’t really have a good picture of what it’s all about. Sure, you know it has something to do with the unintuitive behavior of the world described by quantum mechanics—cats in boxes that are blends of