Curatorial Insight, From the Collection
We take history seriously at the Computer History Museum. It’s our middle name, after all. But it’s not easy history to do, for several reasons.
This is the third of five video releases of The Boston Computer Society (BCS) General Meetings, by the Computer History Museum.
On April 16, 2016, Silicon Valley’s most influential technologists traded in their signature jeans and hoodies for suits and gowns as they joined technology leaders, innovators, and visionaries from around the world at the Computer History Museum for its 2016 Fellow Awards.
John V. Blankenbaker, the inventor of the Kenbak, has a long career in computing, dating back to the 1950s. His association with the Museum dates back to the early 1980s when the Kenbak was named “The First PC” in the Computer Museum’s Earliest PC contest in 1986.
Andrew S. Grove was a seminal figure in the history of the semiconductor industry, and in the story of high-technology industry in Silicon Valley. He passed away on March 21st, 2016. Born in Hungary in 1936, Grove faced, and overcame, profound challenges: A Jewish child who survived German and then Soviet occupations,
Since 2008, over a hundred billion apps have been downloaded from Apple’s App Store onto users’ iPhones or iPads. However, the technology and tools powering the mobile “app revolution” are not themselves new, but rather have a long history spanning over thirty years, one which connects back to the beginnings of softwar
Today a colleague pointed me to a classic in the study of material culture, E. McClure Fleming’s “Artifact Study: A Proposed Model.” In this essay, Fleming outlines a systematic process for interrogating artifacts: Proceeding from “Identification” and “Evaluation” and on to “Cultural Analysis” and “Interpretation.” Fle
When studying the social movements and countercultural ethos of the 1960s and 1970s, researchers and historians might not initially think to visit the Computer History Museum for relevant resources. However, the intersections between these sociopolitical phenomena and the histories of early computerized social networks
Sixty years ago, on February 14, 1956, two remarkable people addressed a luncheon for scientists, educators and the press at San Francisco’s Hotel St. Francis. One of the speakers would become one of the most successful businessmen and respected philanthropists of his generation. The other would go on to win a Nobel Pr
