MOUNTAIN VIEW, CA – DECEMBER 2: Dag Spicer, senior curator on the Pc Historical past Museum is photographed in entrance of a 1964 CDC 6600 pc on Thursday, Dec. 2, 2021, in Mountain View, Calif. (Aric Crabb/Bay Space Information Group)
It’s been known as the geek’s Valhalla.
The Pc Historical past Museum in Mountain View, the world’s largest assortment of computing artifacts, boasts such improvements as ENIAC, the digital whiz; the speedy Cray-1 supercomputer; the transportable however heavy Osborne; the legendary Apple I private pc; and Enigma, the traditionally vital World Battle II machine used to encrypt Axis troop actions.
However consider us once we say that you simply don’t need to be a geek’s geek to get pleasure from this museum. There’s a complete show on a teapot (the legendary curved 3-D mannequin kick-started the world of CGI). And a shrine to Pac-Man.
We tapped into the boundless enthusiasm of senior curator and historian Dag Spicer, a former hardware engineer and technical author whose automobile license plate reads “TURING1” — a nod to the sensible mathematician who cracked the Enigma code — for his information to the highlights. When the museum reopens to the general public early this 12 months, you’ll be prepared.
Right here’s an edited model (aka a compressed file) of our conversations:
Q. What's the oldest relic within the museum?
A. The oldest object within the assortment is a set of Napier’s Bones, a pre-computing artifact from about 1700. It's a stunning set of wood rods, with multiplication tables delicately etched on them. Utilizing the rods, multiplication can then be lowered to addition, and division to subtraction.
Q. Which exhibit prompts the techies’ jaws to drop? And what’s the jaw-dropper for non-techies?
A. There may be some overlap in astonishment issue between techies and non-techies. For instance, RAMAC — the world’s first disk drive — holds about 3.75 MB of knowledge and is the scale of a fridge, which practically everybody finds very shocking.
For the technically inclined, I believe seeing an unique Seymour Cray design pocket book for the Cray-1 supercomputer is fairly attention-grabbing, as is the visually beautiful Cray-1 itself, which sits proper beside it. The Cray-1 was the quickest pc on the earth for over 5 years.
Q. What don’t we all know concerning the Nazis’ Enigma and the code-breakers?
A. German navy Enigma operators used codes that have been modified at various intervals — as World Battle II went on, there have been continuously a number of code modifications per day. The Enigma technique was largely damaged by three Polish codebreakers within the Nineteen Twenties. The British constructed on their work and automatic it at scale to allow helpful, pressing, large-scale enemy code-breaking.
Enigma machines are nonetheless very a lot in circulation, albeit as collector’s gadgets. Since their circuitry could be very easy, most nonetheless work or may be made to work. They're simple to function, dependable and rugged — as could be anticipated of a know-how for navy use.
Enjoyable truth: Often, contests are held to decode unique Enigma messages. A classic message is distributed out over the air through Morse code, and whoever can decode it first wins!
Q. Do you significantly have an necessary piece of pc historical past that got here from a Sunnyvale bar, of all locations?
A. We do! It’s the one-of-a-kind 1972 Pong online game prototype that was first put in at Andy Capp’s Tavern in Sunnyvale. Two weeks after putting in it, Pong engineer Al Alcorn was requested to test on the machine because it gave the impression to be damaged. As a substitute of being damaged, Pong’s coin field was truly filled with quarters, exhibiting that there was a wholesome marketplace for video video games. The corporate Alcorn labored for, Atari, would lead a online game revolution.
Q. Did the museum inherit something from the now-defunct Fry’s Electronics?
A. We're in dialogue with them now, truly. They have been a key a part of Silicon Valley historical past. We hope we will protect a few of their supplies so future generations can perceive what a novel enterprise and cultural establishment they have been.
Q. Geeks might imagine paper is passé, however you may have fairly a set of paperwork. What’s one of many cool items of ephemera?
A. One in every of my favorites is the punched card vacation wreath made within the Nineteen Sixties. IBM outlined the “IBM Card” in 1928 for its mechanical workplace tools. Playing cards have been made by the billions till rendered out of date by on-line enter strategies within the mid-Seventies.
Talking of paper, we even have one of many largest paper archives within the historical past of computing on the earth, with practically one linear mile of usually uncommon and distinctive paperwork from main thinkers and pioneers in computing. Throughout COVID, we've seen a dramatic enhance within the variety of analysis requests and folks accessing our archives. So pc historical past marches on, regardless of issues.
Particulars: When the museum reopens, discover particulars on workshops, occasions, hours and admission at https://computerhistory.org. 1401 N. Shoreline Blvd., Mountain View.