 | Pioneers
of Computing by the
museum's "virtual director", Jonathan
Bowen.
| The Alan Turing Home Page
by the museum's first "virtual curator", Andrew
Hodges, author of Alan
Turing: The Enigma. See also AlanTuring.net,
the Turing Archive for the History of Computing.
| Charles Babbage
(1791-1871) including the Difference
Engine.
| Mandelbrot
Exhibition.
| A Brief History of
Algebra and Computing.
| John
V. Atanasoff: Obituary (June 1995).
| Early Microprocessor
Instruction Set Cards.
| N-dimensional
cubes, including program code to generate them.
| Computer graphics image
archive, including moving
images.
| 3-D and SIRDS images,
including Virtual Reality.
| Paul's Virtual Exhibition.
An experimental ray-traced gallery/museum.
| Computer audio.
| A selection of
organizations with WWW servers, including many major computing,
electronics and telecoms corporations.
| Bob's Computer Museum
- guide to a growing personal collection of mainly microcomputers by Robert
Manners. (Good brief information and pictures.)
| Lionising
Leo: Review of The World's First Business Computer: User-Driven
Innovation, D.T. Caminer (ed.), McGraw-Hill,
1996. | |
| Acorn: The
Company, Cambridge, UK. An early home computer manufacturer.
| Amdahl: Company
History, USA.
| Apple: History,
California, USA. Personal computer manufacturer found by Jobs and Wozniak,
only real competition to the IBM PC. See also apple-history.com.
| AT&T: History
of AT&T research and development (see chronology
and archival films
incluidng early e-mail) and research
history. Telecommunications company where the
transistor (1947) and Unix
operating system were invented. See also the first
electrical digital computer (1939).
| Compaq: News,
USA. PCs; second
largest computing company having bought Digital
in January 1998.
| Control Data Corporation (CDC): About
Control Data, USA. First supercomputer
(CDC6600) manufacturer.
| Corel: News,
USA. Software including WordPerfect.
| Cray: A
Company Overiew, USA. Supercomputer
manufacturer. Bought by Silicon Graphics.
| Data General: Corporate
Information, USA. Early minicomputer manufacturer.
| Digital: Computing
Timeline, Massachusetts, USA. Early minicomputer manufacturer. See 40th
Anniversary (23 August 1997).
| Hewlett-Packard (HP): History,
California, USA. Includes the
Garage which was workshop of Bill
Hewlett and Dave Packard
when they started business.
| IBM: About
IBM, USA. See also IBM
and the Internet: an ancient history.
| ICL: History
of Ownership and Flotation, UK.
| Intel: In
Brief and museum,
California, USA. The company who introduced the world's first
microprocessor in 1971.
| James Martin & Co.: Our
Company History. Methodology and process management, founded in 1981. See
also the James
Martin Professor of Computing.
| J.
Lyons & Co.: First business computer (Lyons
Electronic Office - LEO) manufacturer, UK.
| Logica: About
Logica, London, UK. A leading international software house, founded in
1969.
| Microsoft: History,
Seattle, USA. Largest PC software company in the world. See Microsoft
Museum.
| Rational Software:
Company history,
USA. Software application development support company, founded in 1981.
| NeXT:
California, USA. Founded by Steve Jobs after leaving Apple,
now reconsumed by Apple.
| Olivetti: The
story, Italy. From typewriters to IT, telecommunications and multimedia.
| Oracle: About
Oracle, USA. World's largest vendor of information management software.
| Silicon Graphics (SGI): Corporate
Overview, California, USA. A workstation manfacturer, concentrating on
high-quality graphics, founded in the early 1980s.
| Sun: Corporate
Information: History, California, USA. A leading workstation manufacturer,
founded in 1982.
| Unisys: History
Newsletter, USA. Information about UNIVAC, Sperry, Burroughs etc.
| Xilinx: About
the Company, USA. Introduced the first Field-Programmable Gate Array (FPGA)
in 1985. | |
History of computing organizations
| The Atari Historical Society.
| Australian Computer
Museum Society (ACMS).
| Charles Babbage Institute (CBI),
Center for the History of Information Processing, University of Minnesota, USA.
Dedicated to the preservation of the history of information processing. See
links to Web sites related to the
history of information processing, Hollywood
and computers, and photo
gallery.
| Computer Conservation
Society, UK. A co-operative venture between the British
Computer Society (BCS) and the Science
Museum in London. The CCS
was constituted in September 1989 as a a BCS
Specialist Group. Secretary: Tony Sale t.sale@qufaro.demon.co.uk.
Publishes Computer
Resurrection: The Bulletin of the Computer Conservation Society. ISSN
0958-7403. See the CCS
Archive including computer simulators at
Manchester.
| Computer History Association of
California (CHAC), USA. Newsletters, archive materials, and other
information and files. See History
Pages.
| Historical
Computer Society (HCS), USA. See a planned virtual
computer history museum including a
chronology of computer history from 3000BC and a virtual
tour of microcomputer history.
| International Charity
Foundation for History and Development of Computer Science and Technique
(ICFCST),
Kiev, Ukraine. See virtual museum.
| LEO Computers
Society, UK.
| National
Archive for the History of Computing, University of Manchester, UK.
Includes a catalogue
of manuscripts and further sources. | Association for History
and Computing (AHC) which publishes the History
and Computing journal and holds annual
conferences.
| History Computerization
Project of the Regional History Center, University of Southern
California and the Los Angeles City Historical Society, in cooperation with
the Conference of California Historical Societies.
| ACM 50th Anniversary Celebration
(1947-1997). (See also text
only page). ACM97 - The Next 50
years of Computing. San Jose, California, USA, 1-5 March 1997, including a conference.
Part of the 100 year journey of computing (1947-2047).
| Toronto PET Users Group (TPUG),
Canada. The oldest Commodore computer club, founded in 1978. Supports nearly
all Commodore computers, including the PET, SuperPET, CBM, Amiga, etc., and
the COMAL, CP/M and GEOS environments.
| Vintage Computer Festival,
California, USA. An annual event. See links. | |
| 50 years of
the transistor (1997).
| AlanTuring.net, the Turing Archive
for the History of Computing. See Alan Turing's Automatic
Computing Engine (ACE).
| BCPL, a programming
language designed by Martin
Richards in 1966.
| A Brief History of the
Internet by Barry Leiner, Vinton Cerf et al. from the Internet
Society.
| A Brief History of
the Internet by Bruce Sterling.
| A Brief History of the Joint
Network Team (1979-1994), developers of the JANET
academic network in the UK, by Bob Cooper.
| Brief History of
Networking - important dates, including telephones
and digital years.
| A Brief History of
the Rice Computer (1959-1971).
| Centre for the History of Defence
Electronics (CHiDE), Bournemouth University, UK. Includes a planned virtual
museum on radar, sonar, communications and electronic counter-measures.
| Chronology of
Events in the History of Microcomputers by Ken Polsson.
| Chronology of Digital
Computing Machines (to 1952) by Mark Brader.
| The Computer Archive - the
Weinreb collection.
| Computer
Engineering section of the NSF SUCCEED
Engineering Visual Database, USA. A good set of photographic and other
pictorial resources.
| Computer History Project,
Uppsala University, Sweden.
| Computer Science:
History of Computers links from Study
Web.
| Computers:
History and Development from Jones Multimedia Encyclopedia.
| Computing section of
the Media History Project
Connections Pages.
| CSIRAC:
The Birth of Computing in Australia in 1949, including a chronology.
First stored-memory electronic computer in Australia (1949-1964). See also Guide
to the Records of CSIRAC incluidng a photo
gallery.
| Dinosaurs mating
(humour) and other entries
from the Free On-line Dictionary of
Computing (FOLDOC).
| The
Early Development of POP by Prof.
Robin Poppleston.
| Early
Years at Manchester University, UK. Includes information on and
photographs of the prototype for the Ferranti Mark I computer, presented and
authorized by Tommy Thomas.
| The Electronic
Labyrinth, a study of hypertext technology, including a time
line.
| An Embedded History
- Part 2 and Part
3 from Embedded
Update electronic newsletter on embedded systems.
| The First Email
Message sent by Ray Tomlinson (1972).
| First Generation Computers,
including the Bendix G-15 (1956).
| Forty Years On:
An Anniversary Volume (1957-1997), Department of Computing, University of
Newcastle upon Tyne, UK, edited by Barry Hodgson and Brian
Randell.
| Great Microprocessors of
the Past and Present by John
Bayko (Tau). This guide covers unique and representative designs from the
beginning in the early 1970s until now. (Also in a possibly older version here.)
| The Hidden History of the Internet,
Pretext Magazine, March 1998.
| History of Computing
Information including the ENIAC and Historic
Computer Images collected by Mike
Muuss.
| History
of Computation course by Prof. John Tucker, Department of Computer Science,
University of Wales Swansea.
| History
of Computers course material from North Carolina State University, USA. (No
hyperlinks.)
| History of Computing from the IEEE
Computer Society. See Events
in the History of Computing by year, including many images and photographs,
the Timeline of
Computer History (68 page 1.5 Mbyte PDF
format file) and J.A.N. Lee's looking.back
column.
| History of Computing.
A lecture prepared by Michelle Hoyle for an introductory Computer Science
class about the history of computing devices, starting from the development of
computing and progressing through to the late 1980s. Includes colour slides.
| The
History of Computing at Los Alamos including the Z1
to Z4 computers designed by Konrad
Zuse.
| History of Computing Research
Group, Department of Computer
Science, University of Warwick by Martin
Campbell-Kelly et al. See also research
outline.
| History
of Computing list of publications by Prof.
Brian Randell.
| The History of Computing, an
index of on-line resources by John A. N.
Lee, Editor-in-Chief of the IEEE Annals of the History
of Computing. See The
Machine That Changed the World.
| The History of Computing
links by Horst Zuse, son of
the computer pioneer Konrad
Zuse.
| History
of computing: the first 130 years from a course on Management
and Social Impact of IT by John
Ogden, University of Reading, UK.
| History of the
Department, Basser Computing Laboratory, University of Sydney, Australia.
Includes the SILLIAC computer.
| History
of the Internet from the Pacific Science
Center, USA.
| History of the Internet,
including an excellent timeline using Java,
part of Life on the Internet by PBS,
USA.
| The History
of the Internet by Dave Kristula.
| The
History of Modern Computers and their Inventors by Mary Bellis.
| History
of Parallel Computing. Chronology of major developments in parallel
computing and supercomputing.
| History of the Perl
programming langugae.
| The History of Project
Delta, high school computing in the 1960's and 70's, Delaware, USA.
| Hobbes'
Internet Timeline - important Internet dates and statistics.
| IBM 1620 history site.
| IEEE Computer Society:
A History, USA. Publishers of the IEEE
Annals of the History of Computing journal. Founded by 1946, the
society celebrated its 50th anniversary
in 1996.
| ILLIAC I,
University of Illinois, USA. Includes information on the history of computer
music.
| The Internet Archive. See the WWW
History Project.
| Lexikon Services Publishing
"History of Computing". An electronic 850 page encyclopedia on
diskette. Includes A
Brief Chronology of Historical Firsts in Computers (1939-1981).
| Lisp
History.
| LLNL Computing: War Stories and Anecdotes
including Picture History of
LLNL Computers from the Lawrence Livermore
National Laboratory, California, USA.
| Logic
through History - Aristotle to Von Neumann.
| 50th Anniversary of the First
Stored-Program Computer ( | Multics. An influential operating
system, begun in 1965 and still in use today. See history.
Also available in
the UK.
| Past Notable
Women of Computing including Ada
Byron King, Countess of Lovelace (1815-1852).
| The Present at
the Creation of the ARPAnet, the precursor of the Internet (1969).
| Programming in
C: History.
| A Short History of the Computer
by Jeremy Meyers.
| StudyWeb: Computer
Science: History of Computers links from StudyWeb.
| Totalisator History - an
Australian achievement.
| Triumph of the Nerds, a PBS
series, including a history
of the computer timeline.
| Twenty-Five Years
(1971-1996), Department of Computer Science, The University of Reading, UK.
| UNIVAC®
Memories - history of UNIVAC 1100 series mainframes.
| Untangling
the Web including a Timeline
of Hypertext (3000BC-1996AD) by David Aden and John Stanard.
| Vintage Calculators
from X-Number World of Calculators.
| The Webstory.com. UK BBC/Open
University TV series, 1998.
| Why Computers are
Computers, a book by David
Rutland, including excerpts
and some answers to FAQs.
| The World Wide Web History
Project by the Internet Archive.
|
WWW Hot Topics:
Unix 25th Anniversary in 1994.
| |
| American Computer Museum,
Bozeman, Montana, USA.
| Australian Computer Museum Inc.,
a museum planned by the Australian Computer Museum Society.
| Bletchley
Park, near Milton Keynes, UK. "Britain's Best Kept Secret." See what
you can see and do including the Germany Enigma and Lorenz Cipher machines,
the Colossus
Rebuild Project (with photographs).
| Commercial Computing Museum (Commputerseum),
Ontario, Canada. Dedicated to the acquisition, preservation, and exhibition of
artifacts and memorabilia from the commercial use of electronic, digital
computers. Includes a list of Computer
History Web Sites.
| The Computer Museum, Boston,
Massachusetts, USA. The world's foremost museum dedicated to computers, started
by Ken Olsen, ex-president of Digital
Equipment Corporation. See History
Center, Internet
Sampler, the World Wide
Web, and a walk-through
computer. A History
Center is to be established in Silicon Valley, California.
| Computer Museum, University of
Amsterdam, The Netherlands. Specializes in scientific and industrial computing.
Includes electronic calculators, analog computers, core memory and paper tape.
| Computer Museum of America,
Coleman College, La Mesa, San Diego, California, USA. See sample
collections and The
Evolution of Computing slide show.
| The Cray
Computer Museum, Chippewa Falls, Wisconsin, USA. (Now dismantled.)
| Euporean
Computer Museum. (Currently in Spanish only.)
| Heinz Nixdorf MuseumsForum, Paderborn,
Germany. See computer museum. (In
German.)
| Information
Highway exhibition, at the Ontario Science
Centre, Toronto, Canada.
| Information Superhighway
exhibition, held in 1995 at the Science
Museum, London, UK. See Computing
and Information Technology collection, the Computing
Then and Now gallery information Babbage's
Calculating Engines, 1832-71 and the Pilot
ACE 1950. Alternatively, see the recommended Computing
Then and Now page from the Treasures
of the Science Museum on-line exhibit. See also the recently acquired Phillips
Economic Hydraulic Computer, first demonstrated at the London
School of Economics in November 1949.
| The Intel
Museum, Santa Clara, California, USA. Micro-chips, from the company who
manufactured the first
microprocessor in 1971.
| The Lost Museum of
Sciences Computer Exhibit.
| Microsoft Museum. (Warning:
may crash Netscape browsers! ;-)
| Mind Machine Web Museum,
a virtual computer history gallery by Hal
Layer. Computers, calculators, games and artifacts.
| Musée
d'Histoire Informatique (Computer History Museum). A virtual museum on
personal computers from 1978 onwards, by Philippe Dubois. See also the Pong
story on the first video game. (In French.)
| Museu Virtual da Informática,
Portugal. A virtual museum including a
number of computers such as the ENIAC.
(Mostly in Portuguese.)
| Museum of Computer Technology,
Denver, Colorado, USA.
| Museum of HP Calculators (MoHPC). Learn
about reverse Polish notation!
| Museum of the
Department of Computer Science, School of Engineering and Applied Science,
University of Virginia, Charlottesville, Virginia, USA. Various
computer-related artifacts, both historical and modern, from the personal
collection of Professor Bill Wulf. (Large images.)
| Museum "Waalsdorp",
The Netherlands. See computer
history of the TNO Physics and
Electronics Laboratory since 1927. Supercomputers, minicomuters, etc., with
many photographs. (In Dutch and some English.)
| National Cryptologic Museum, National
Security Agency, Maryland, USA. See tour
of exhibits.
| National Museum
of Computing Instruments, Pisa, Italy. Includes QuickTime
VR plugin movies. (In Italian.)
| National Museum of Information
Technology and Telecommunications, Brasília, Brazil.
| Personal Computer Museum,
Stenungsund, Sweden. In the Guinness Book of Records because of its collection
of 250 different personal computers.
| Smithsonian Institution, Washington, USA. Computer
History, including an Information Age Tour, the collaborative Innovation
Network, and oral/video history interviews with computing personalities.
See also From Carbons to
Computers including links to resources.
| Tech Museum of Innovation, San Jose,
California, USA. Includes a microelectronics
exhibit.
| Telemuseum, Sweden. History of
telecommunications.
| University
of California at Davis Computer Science Museum. Includes a timeline
of computer history.
| |
See also:
| Museums with significant
holdings of computer hardware. (Addresses only.)
| The
School Museum site, including a list
of virtual museums produced by schools and resources
on building
a virtual museum, provided by From
Now On, The Educational Technology Journal. See also an article on Virtual
Museums.
| Computer
museums listed by Yahoo. | |
On-line exhibits and information
The following are virtual museums or exhibitions:
| The Apple Museum.
| The Apple /
Macintosh Museum.
| The Atari Exhibit.
| BESM-6 Nostalgia Page. Soviet
mainframe computer. Computers
History and Emulation for various computer systems. Includes platforms,
consoles, and CPUs.
| Digital Equipment Corporation
PDP-8 index.
| Eniac Virtual
Museum, School of Engineering and Applied Science, University of
Pennsylvania, USA. Celebration of the 50th anniversary of ENIAC in 1996.
| European
Museum on Computer Science and Technology in Ukraine from ICFCST.
See the early BESM,
MESM and SESM
computers. (Also in Ukrainian and Russian.)
| Fee Computer Services Museum,
UK. IBM systems of the 1960s and 1970s (360s and 370s).
| First Virtual Mousepad Museum,
The Netherlands.
| Generations: Through
the History of Computing. A virtual tour (1960-1996). Transistors,
integrated circuits, microprocessors,
etc.
| German
Web Computer Museum by Clemens Weller, Schwäbisch Gmünd, Germany.
Personal computers, printers, software, etc. See computer
collections. (In German and English.)
| George
Graham and Bill Gates: A Study in Architectural Dominance, a virtual
exhibition by Jonathan Sills (MSc student), Museum
of the History of Science, Oxford, UK.
| Home Computer Hall of
Fame. Includes large pictures where available.
| JavaSlide:
the WWW's very first Java Slide Rule.
| Mechanical Calculating Machines by
Erez Kaplan, who collects such machines. Includes a chronological description,
photographs, etc.
| Obsolete
Computer Museum. Don't throw away your old computer until you have taken a
photograph of it for this on-line museum.
| The Retrocomputing
Museum by Eric Raymond and John Cowan. Dedicated to programming
languages, machine
emulators, computer games, etc. Includes documentation and example
programs.
| The Software Museum,
Amsterdam, The Netherlands. Early disk software directory listings.
| Spreadpoint Virtual Museum
of Computer Arts and Spreadpoint
Demos Museum. Commodore Amiga computer demonstrations, etc.
| The System Source Computer
Museum. Collection of personal computing devices and simulation
programs.
| TI-99/4A Home Computer
Page.
| Toggle Software Mouse Museum by
Kevin Morton.
| The Virtual Altair Museum.
| The Virtual Museum of Manchester
Computing, University of Manchester, UK. Includes a (photographic) machine
hall (featuring the Manchester
Mark 1) and an excellent on-line library
presenting many historic publications (e.g., Electronic
Digital Computers, a letter to Nature,
September 1948). See also the 50th
Anniversary of the First Stored-Program Computer.
| Women and Computer
Science. | |
| Aaron's Virtual
Computer Museum by Aaron Bond.
Microcomputer collection, etc., with photographs.
| Belgian Web Microcomputer Museum
by Lucien Stevens, Belgium. (In English and Dutch.) See collection
including many external links and also other microcomputer
collectors.
| Bolo's Computer Museum, Lausanne,
Switzerland. Includes links to other
computer museums on the Web.
| Carl Friend's
Minicomputer Museum. Personal collection
of mainly 16-bit minicomputers, especially Data General and Digital.
| The Computer
Collection by Jay Jaeger. Virtual
tour of personal computer collection including IBM, DEC (PDP), DG, HP,
microcomputers, etc.
| Computer Collection by
Paul Pierce. Presents a personal collection of historical computer equipment,
including mainframes and minicomputers (especially the PDP-8 family).
| DECadence,
a collection of Digital equipment by Varga
Ákos Endre, Hungary. See also PDP-11
history page and the KFKI
TPA series, Hungarian DEC clone computers.
| John's Computer Collection.
Mini and micro-computers.
| Jonathan
Marsters' Computers. Various microcomputers.
| Kevan's Computer Bits...
by Kevan Heydon. An excellent
well-documented personal collection, including computers,
calculators, games and peripherals, mostly with photographs. See also other
collectors.
| Mike's Computer Museum
by Michael Walder, UK. PCs and non-PCs. See also other
computer collections.
| Museum
of Soviet Calculators by Andrew Davie, Sydney, Australia.
| The Old Calculators Web
Museum by Rick Bensene, USA. See collection
and other
calculator sites.
| Sprog's Computer Closet by
Will Williams, UK. A collection
of early home computers.
| Sinclair
MicroComputer Museum by Majik.
| Tom's Classic Computers by
Tom Copper, Roxboro, North Carolina, USA. A large collection of home
computers. See computer
links.
| Uncle Roger's Classic Computers
by Roger Louis Sinasohn,
San Francisco, California, USA. Alphabetic listing of mainly home computers. | |
| Computer folklore (also available
via the Web from Deja News)
Apple II
| Digital Equipment Corporation PDP
series:
|
ICL PERQ
| Sinclair | |
See also:
| All computing newsgroups.
| History
of computing in the UK mailing list.
| Newsgroup articles on computer
history from Deja News. | |
| DEC PDP simulator
sources/documentation and software
by Bob Supnik. See Preserving
Computing's Past: Restoration and Simulation by Maxwell M. Burnet and
Robert M. Supnik.
| Erstz-11 PDP-11 emulator for MS-DOS PCs. Free
demo version available for unlimited personal/hobby use. See on-line RSX11M+
operating system demo.
| Emulation Software
R&D WWW Page. Information on CPU and OS (Operating System) emulators.
| Emulators
from The Retrocomputing
Museum.
| Simulators of
historic machines in the CCS Archive
at Manchester, including EDSAC, Pegasus, SSEM and Stantec-ZEBRA. See overview.
| Simulation programs
from the System Source
Computer Museum including Java
Pong and IMSAI /
Altair emulators (for PCs).
|
Altair and IMSAI
emulators (for PC/Windows) by Michael
Hyman.
| Amiga Emulator. UAE
Commodore Amiga software emulation.
| BESM-6 Emulator News.
Soviet mainframe computer.
| CSIRAC graphical on-line simulator
written in Java. The first
stored-memory electronic computer in Australia.
| EDSAC Simulator (for PC
and Macintosh) by Martin
Campbell-Kelly. See also Group
Echo and Group India
EDSAC Java applet simulators produced by students at Cambridge
for the 50th EDSAC
anniversary in 1999.
| RSTS/E
operating system simulator for PDP-11s from Project
Delta.
| Zuse's Z3 Computer
simulation
(in German, online using Java). Off-line version also available.
| Another Z3
Computer simulation. | |
| Computers
and Internet: History list including other museums
from Yahoo.
| ETC Web Museum,
including a VR
Hall.
| Vintage
computers for sale from eBay. | |
