Guest Author - Jay Ramki

BY JAY RAMKI

Look around and you will probably find digital technology at work in many aspects of our life. Electronic chips are present in watches, radios, microwave ovens, dishwashers, washing machines, computers, CD players, DVD players, laser disks and pagers. How did we advance from the counting stage to a multi processing supercomputer Age? Let us venture in to the computer museums to study today’s digital world.

Computer History Museum, California is the world’s largest computer museum with 4000 artifacts, 10,000 images, an extensive collection of documentation and software housed in the Silicon Valley. The museum preserves and exhibits the “bits & bytes” revolution and its impact on our lives. The five categories of collections include artifacts, documentation, ephemera, software and media.
Online Exhibition – The exhibition includes collections that help study the history of development of computers, the growth of the Internet and microprocessors and tributes to the brains behind the explosive advances in technology.
Explore the history of computers from the time of the stored program computer to the birth of the Internet and HTML.
Timeline in Computer History

Click here to have a look at the 10 important artifacts that shaped computer history

Speaker Series held by the museum invites eminent scientists and scholars to share their experiences about insights and advances in the computer industry.
Click here to go to the Museum Website

American Computer Museum, Montana exhibits a 1000 artifacts collection comprising of antique office equipment like typewriters, staples, and electric fans to mainframes, personal computers and peripherals. Start from the pebbles and fingers that a cave man would have used for calculations and move on to the abacus, astrolabe, calculators, punched tapes, electronic storage forms, mainframes, desktops – enough information to keep the novices and the experts engrossed for hours. Some artifacts are even signed by the inventors.
Click here to go to the Museum Website

Interesting exhibits like the Apollo Moon Navigation computer along with the watch worn can be seen in the museum.
Apollo Moon Navigation Computer


Old Computers Museum, an online museum has 835 old computers with their configuration profile. Check out the Fun section for a few stupid scams and laughs.
Old Computers Museum Website