Link: https://www.computerhistory.org/collections/catalog

This is realllly cool. I have a rabbit hole to go down into tonight

I have come across (and enjoyed) many of the videos [1] they have posted to YouTube.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/@ComputerHistory

Very cool stuff.

Vintage marketing of the future: https://www.computerhistory.org/collections/curator-picks/vi...

Lectures: https://www.computerhistory.org/collections/catalog/search-c...

Oral Histories: https://www.computerhistory.org/collections/catalog/search-c...

Related, of the more in-person variety:

Favorite Tech Museums

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46504220

I'm a fan of CHM. That said there collections have (understandably) a rather Silicon-Valley-legacy-centric view of, erm, computer history. You'll find little mention, for example, of these tantalizing early mentions of alternative computer architectures (with pictures!) in NSA's predecessor OP-20-G, as posed alongside the then-nascent von Neumann architecture (also covered).

https://www.governmentattic.org/8docs/NSA-WasntAllMagic_2002...

CHM employee here. Always great to see CHM on HN. Glad folks are excited about this -- as are we! There's so much cool stuff in the Collection.

Ooh check out the Discovery wall! I see a Furby, a Power Glove (call AVGN) and a Ninja Turtles NES Game: https://www.computerhistory.org/collections/discovery

This is really awesome. The CHM is one of my favorite places in the world. I had applied for a web developer position there not too long ago, great to see them expand things online like this

This one has always been a favorite: https://computerhistory.org/blog/the-two-napkin-protocol/

This place is great, but my work had a function here and I walked around with one of our juniors and never have I felt so old. The pure astonishment and confusion when looking at a “floppy disk” aged me instantly.

I've been to this museum ~10 times. It never gets old. I take everyone I know there. I like to see their reactions.

New portal looks kinda cool too.

This is very welcome. Just a couple months ago I was down some interesting retro-computing rabbit hole and there was a story referenced in a couple articles and a book. The cited source was an original document that's in CHM's collection but it wasn't accessible on CHM's site nor was it available anywhere else online. Frustrating but understandable. They must get mountains of documents contributed from personal files of first-hand participants who created this history.

Sorting, scanning, indexing and tagging all those loose files must be a Herculean yet monotonously thankless chore. So thanks to all the volunteers and donors for enabling this invaluable resource to exist.

If you're into this and you're ever in Bozeman Montana, check out the American Computer and Robotics Museum. It's excellent!

https://acrmuseum.org/

This is great, though every geek should visit this place in person. It gets better every year. Especially on the days where they demo the giant IBM 1401.

My buddy took me on a Silicon Valley tour when I lived there , we hit up the HP Garage, Apple Garage, Intel Museum & the Computer History Museum in one day.

One of the best days ever: took my boys to CHM where they got to play Space War on a PDP-1 against the man that programmed it!

Went for the first time a couple weeks ago while on a road trip — incredible! However I counted about two dozen items on display that I own, which tells me I should slow down on the collecting / ramp up the downsizing.

The living computer museum used to have SSH access for their vintage systems.

Google Maps says people spend 0.5-3 hours there. I spent 6.5 because it was so amazing. Highly recommended.

CHM was a fun visit in person, but type "TRS-80" into their online search catalog and you get:

NO RESULTS FOUND, PLEASE TRY BROADENING YOUR SEARCH OR SUBMITTING A NEW KEYWORD

I mean, come on folks, you need to up your game.

CHM is great, but I still lament the closure and liquidation of Paul Allen's Living Computers Museum + Labs, which I never got to visit.

I'm hoping they digitize some of the older archives they have in storage.

For example, they apparently have 23 U-Matic tapes of the HOPL (History of Programming Languages) conference in 1978 [1].

The proceedings [2] describe one of the tapes that don't make it into the transcribed proceedings:

> The after-dinner speeches at the conference banquet were devoted to humorous reminiscences and anecdotes about the languages and events during their development. The banquet anecdotes are not included in this volume because, although they are humorous to hear, the voice inflections make a big difference, and they are not necessarily amusing to read.

[1] https://www.computerhistory.org/collections/catalog/10269512... [2] https://dl.acm.org/doi/book/10.1145/800025