Organisation

Computer History Museum

The Computer History Museum preserves hardware, software, documents and oral histories that allow the history of computing to be studied beyond surviving products and corporate mythology.

Type
museum, library or archive
Founded
1996 as an independent museum; roots in earlier computer-museum collections
Location
Mountain View, California, United States
Known for
Smartphones
Historical role

What the organisation contributed

The Computer History Museum describes it as the first smartphone, while also noting its commercial failure and severe battery and cost limits.

Why it mattered

Reduces place-bound access and the need for separate tools by combining networked communication, capture, sensing, computation and personal identity in one portable platform.

Connected topics

Where this fits in ITEM

Evidence

Sources and further reading

  1. About the Computer History Museum

    Computer History Museum · Computer History Museum

    Open source ↗

  2. Computers and Games: A Love Story

    Computer History Museum · Computer History Museum

    Open source ↗

  3. Playing History with Games: Steps toward Historical Archives of Computer Gaming

    Henry Lowood · Computer History Museum Software Preservation Group · 2004

    Open source ↗

  4. 1947: Invention of the Point-Contact Transistor

    Computer History Museum · 1947

    Open source ↗

  5. 1956: First Commercial Hard Disk Drive Shipped

    Computer History Museum · 1956

    Open source ↗

  6. A compiler does not teach the computer human language. It translates one exact formal world into another, and the civilisation built on software depends on that translation being right

    Open source ↗

  7. Analytical Engine plans

    Computer History Museum

    Open source ↗

  8. Assembling the Integrated Data Store (IDS)

    Computer History Museum

    Open source ↗

  9. Audrey, Alexa, Hal, and More

    Computer History Museum · 1952

    Open source ↗

  10. Bringing a New Voice to Genius—MITalk, the CallText 5010, and Stephen Hawking's Wheelchair

    Computer History Museum

    Open source ↗

  11. Calculators collection

    Computer History Museum

    Open source ↗

  12. Charles W. Bachman

    Computer History Museum

    Open source ↗

  13. Digital Machines

    Computer History Museum

    Open source ↗

  14. ERA Magnetic Storage Systems

    Computer History Museum

    Open source ↗

  15. First COBOL compilers

    Computer History Museum

    Open source ↗

  16. History of FORTRAN paper

    Computer History Museum

    Open source ↗

  17. IBM/BellSouth Simon Personal Communicator

    Computer History Museum

    Open source ↗

  18. Internet History of the 1960s

    Computer History Museum · 1960

    Open source ↗

  19. Interview of Donald Davies

    Computer History Museum

    Open source ↗

  20. Inventing the Transistor

    Computer History Museum

    Open source ↗

  21. Leibniz and Curta

    Computer History Museum

    Open source ↗

  22. Magnetic Drums

    Computer History Museum

    Open source ↗

  23. Magnetic Tape

    Computer History Museum

    Open source ↗

  24. Many People, One System and early time-sharing communication

    Computer History Museum

    Open source ↗

  25. Memory & Storage: Timeline of Computer History

    Computer History Museum

    Open source ↗

  26. Memory: Selling the Computer Revolution

    Computer History Museum

    Open source ↗

  27. Phones Get Smart

    Computer History Museum

    Open source ↗

  28. RDBMS Plenary 1: Early Years

    Computer History Museum

    Open source ↗

  29. saving data

    Open source ↗

  30. Schickard and Pascaline

    Computer History Museum

    Open source ↗

  31. Software and Languages timeline

    Computer History Museum

    Open source ↗

  32. Texting: Instant, But Not Simultaneous

    Computer History Museum

    Open source ↗

  33. The Storage Engine: A Timeline of Milestones in Storage Technology

    Computer History Museum

    Open source ↗

  34. The Virtues of Sharing

    Computer History Museum

    Open source ↗

  35. Thomas Arithmometer

    Computer History Museum

    Open source ↗

  36. Timesharing as a Business

    Computer History Museum

    Open source ↗

  37. Timesharing: PDP-1 Restoration Project

    Computer History Museum

    Open source ↗

  38. Z3

    Computer History Museum

    Open source ↗