Computer history and museum collections

Computer History Museum: A virtual visit

Description of the event

The Computer History Museum has both an online and a 'real world' incarnation. It is a physical warehouse of different types of computers, a virtual catalogue of computer history throughout the ages, and also provides information about specific topics pertinent to computer history, such as the history of video games. The Museum contains artifacts such as the first calculators, 'punch cards' and online computers as well as information about their place in computer history. It makes a convincing case about the ubiquity of computers in everyday life from an early age, even though the contrast between the primitive nature of early computers and computers today is striking.

There is also a stark contrast between the functionality of early computers and computers today. The computers we use on a daily basis are multifunctional. People demand that their smartphones do everything from take pictures, surf the webs, and even hold applications that enable them to track their food and their movements. This is in stark contrast to the uni-functional computers of ages past. Although cumbersome and in some cases large as warehouses, early computers could only perform a few, basic tasks. Computers have grown smaller and vastly expanded their ability to perform a variety of functions for the people who hold them in their hands.

Computer history is presented both chronologically, and categorized into a series of topics. For example, some topics under the history of computing include 'mini' computers, digital logic, input and output, and artificial intelligence. The historical overviews enable readers to understand how different components of computing history evolved over time to create our present day reality, and makes significant developments in the field more comprehensible. There are also references to different events which were occurring in American history at the time, to contextualize computer development, spanning from everything from World War II to the miniskirt.

My personal interests

As someone grew up seeing the World Wide Web as ubiquitous, I was interested to read about the history of the Internet, the era before 'Google' was a verb. The topic section includes information on early attempts to catalogue information which stretch back to ancient times, shared computer terminals, and pioneers of the online world. The creation of Lexus-Nexus, Mosaic Netscape, and the dot.com bubble and burst are all chronicled.

What is so striking about the exhibit is the extent to which it shows the rapid development of the Internet in the past twenty years, while in the preceding years, the development was relatively sluggish. Once connections were enabled and the Internet became ubiquitous in the household, innovations proliferated. The Internet illustrates something very profound about communications technology, namely it is only useful and interesting when you can talk 'to' someone, and communications applications on their own, until they become common, are mere curiosities.

What I learned

The most profound thing I learned, in reviewing the grand sweep of the history of computers is the degree to which computer have become a part of daily life in a way they were not when they were first conceptualized. The earliest computers were as large as small rooms and even in supposedly futuristic scenario movies like 2001, computers were primarily entrusted to do 'heavy duty' rather than mundane tasks. Today, it is the everyday computers that have had the most profound influence upon changing the ways that human beings interact with one another.

It is interesting to see how different trends have occurred, ebbed away, and then reasserted themselves. For example, in an age in which few people typed other than secretaries, the 1980s saw the ascent and rapid decent of the 'pen' computer, a computer on which people could write notes. However, today, stylus computers were resurrected on blackberries before becoming obsolete once more with the popularity of touchscreens. Almost everyone today possesses the capacity to type, thanks to the common skill of word processing, but even this may began to once again be an obsolete skill as technology changes.