Computer History Museum visit

I’ve been wanting to see the Computer History Museum in-person for a while now, so this was super exciting :D

Here are a couple takeaways:

• Seeing all the computers you've only seen in old books and on Wikipedia in real life has to be one of the sickest experiences ever.
• I definitely have a newfound appreciation for the quality of the resources I've used to learn about computer history, particularly Computers: The Life Story of a Technology, which is, in fact, very comprehensive and helpful! Honestly, I was shocked at how much of the museum was familiar to me.
• 2 hours was not enough time to peruse 20 exhibits. I wish I'd gotten to spend more time in the later exhibits, particularly Computers & Creativity, because I ended up missing a couple things I'd been looking forward to seeing. Eventually, I'd like to go again.

And, in order of how I viewed them in the museum, here are some of my favorites, which I photographed:

IBM 1401 Demo Room

I didn’t get to see the machine in action, but it was still pretty cool to just see it. If you want to visit CHM, please have more foresight than me and plan your visit when demos are running :’)

Army-grade Enigma machine and Colossus tape pulley

You can tell that this one is army-grade because commercial Enigma machines did not have the plugboard :]

Working reconstruction of the Atanasoff-Berry computer

It looks just like the last known photo of the original computer before it was dismantled.

Atlas logic module

Read the label. Cool, right? The Atlas was one of my favorite computers while reading.

1981 IBM PC

This one is just very iconic.

Altair 8800

The Altair was marketed as “the first desktop computer kit”, and it became a hit with tech hobbyists after being featured in the 1975 edition of Popular Electronics. I was looking for replicas on eBay not long ago.

Jack Kilby’s notebook

Even if it’s a replica, this was striking because it humanized this brilliant engineer whose contributions I’ve read about.

Anyways, there’s many other things I could have featured, but you get the gist. 11/10 museum; would go again.