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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Behind the Scenes
Preservation, Conservation, Restoration: What’s the Difference?
Friday, October 26, 2012
In the course of my work managing CHM’s collections, I often hear people use the terms preservation, conservation, and restoration synonymously. In everyday use, that’s fine. However, these terms actually mean something quite different inside the walls of a museum.
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From the Collection
Squee: The Robot Squirrel
Wednesday, October 24, 2012
From the Collection
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Curatorial Insights
Little Green Men
Friday, October 19, 2012
Before moving up a couple of exits on Highway 101N, to our current location at 1401 North Shoreline Blvd., CHM and part of its collection were housed in a WWII-era Quonset hut at Moffett Field.
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Curatorial Insights
From Copenhagen to Edinburgh: SHOT, SIGCIS, & Artefacts 2012
Wednesday, October 17, 2012
As a curator at the Computer History Museum, I work at the intersection of computing technology, history, and the museum world. I am a member of different tribes with different cultures, practices, and approaches. This is easy to forget when the daily work in collections and exhibitions takes precedence. The annual con
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Behind the Scenes
Bit by Bit: Software Collecting
Friday, October 12, 2012
The collection, preservation and presentation of software artifacts at CHM has been actively pursued during my time as the software curator here, though most of the work has been going on behind the scenes. Since we now have a nice venue for talking about this work with the @CHM blog, I wanted to share with you some of
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From the Collection
The APL Programming Language Source Code
Wednesday, October 10, 2012
Thousands of programming languages were invented in the first 50 years of the age of computing. Many of them were similar, and many followed a traditional, evolutionary path from their predecessors. What eventually became APL was first a mathematical notation, not as a computer programming language.
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Behind the Scenes
Make Software, Change the World!
Friday, October 5, 2012
What is software? You can’t taste it, smell it, or touch it but they say it’s everywhere and it’s changing our lives forever. Since I started working at the Computer History Museum back in 2000, I’ve heard curators, trustees, volunteers, almost everyone, talk about how we need to tell the story of software.
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Curatorial Insights
A Logic Named Joe by Will F. Jenkins
Wednesday, October 3, 2012
How much influence have television, movies, literature and art had on the sciences?
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Behind the Scenes
Lit, Shot and Gigapixeled
Friday, September 28, 2012
Day-to-day my job is to help develop exhibits and to make movies and media for museums. What’s the story? What are the main points? What should the visitor remember when they walk out of the exhibit? It’s not always so easy to figure out the core of what you’re trying to represent.
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From the Collection
Simon’s J’s
Wednesday, September 26, 2012
About five years ago, I noticed a box of punched cards that had set aside. It had been sent by high-performance computing researcher Lloyd Fosdick to the Museum’s forerunner, The Computer Museum, in 1985 and somehow made the trip from Boston to California when the collection was transferred.