Elizabethan philosopher, statesman, and scientist Sir Francis Bacon observed that “once the right path is followed, discoveries in limitless number will arise from the growing stock of knowledge.” This pattern was readily apparent in the history of the diode, it was repeated in the development of the next great leap fo
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
Unlike the Apple I, the Apple II was fully assembled and ready to use with any display monitor. The version with 4K of memory cost $1298. It had color, graphics, sound, expansion slots, game paddles, and a built-in BASIC programming language.
The inventors of the transistor and the integrated circuit received Nobel Prizes. The engineering community marks anniversaries of their conception with conferences, banquets, and awards. Occasionally they are even celebrated in the popular media. So why has no one heard of the inventor of the diode?
I’m often asked if there were one object in the entire world that the museum could acquire, what would it be? It’s a tough question, there are seminal machines that would be amazing to include in the collection. But in my heart, there’s one piece that I have searched for tirelessly which would be outstanding to have: T
The race is on! The Computer History Museum was recently awarded a prestigious two-year federal grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Services to catalog 10,000 backlogged physical objects (hardware and ephemera). That’s a lot to accomplish in such a short time but we know we’ll cross the Finish Line with our
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
ARC was the laboratory started by Douglas Engelbart where the oNLine System (NLS), later Augment, was conceived.
Almost from the moment it was introduced, Apple’s Macintosh computer system was adopted by graphic artists. Sales were brisk and, a little over a year after the Mac’s introduction, a pioneering comic book was created.
The garage has long played host to the creative genius of aspiring technology entrepreneurs here in the good ole Valley de Silicon. Take, for example, Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak, who built the first Apple computers within the confines of Jobs’ parents’ Los Altos garage. There’s the famous HP duo, Bill Hewlett and Dav
