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
On January 9th and 10th of 1986, at Rickey’s Hyatt House in Palo Alto, California, there was an historic gathering of the pioneers who invented personal computing. The event was sponsored by the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM), and hosted by the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center (PARC). Called the “ACM Conferen
The year 2015 marked Ada Lovelace’s 200th birthday, and, in honor of her mathematical and artistic achievements, the Computer History Museum (CHM) began a year-long celebration to commemorate her legacy with exciting Museum-wide events. Among them was our Letters to Lovelace competition, which asked girls across the Un
This is the second of five video releases of Boston Computer Society (BCS) General Meetings, by the Computer History Museum.
December 10, 2015 marks the 200th anniversary of the birth of Ada Byron, later Countess of Lovelace, most famous for her 1843 description of Charles Babbage’s Analytical Engine.